Fifty Shades of Suffering Find the Light
by CodependentLiza
Summary: A tender rendition of Twilight painted back over Fifty Shades, with Edward as Christian as Edward and Bella as herself...or as herself as codependentliza always writes her, which is far more self-denigrating, relational, overwhelmed & vulnerable than SM's Bella would ever have dreamed-except in New Moon. Let the unrestrained mutual caretaking begin! AH/AU Twilight canon couples
1. Chapter 1

**Hello, friends. **

**I'm guessing most of you are as aware as I of the movie premier descending on us next week. Though MOTU (Master of the Universe, which was reworked into 50 Shades of Grey) has been on my short-list of favorite Twilight fanfictions since I stumbled onto it years ago, seeing the movie is not my idea of a useful psychological outing—and I do mean that more than one way.**

**Though she's a wonderful writer and has an excellent mastery (pun intended) of describing in emotionally-compelling/satisfying ways the Dominant-submissive dynamic, Ms. James seems to be one of the "submission equals strength" camp that is, in my own limited experience, the mainstream attitude within BDSM. [Yes, there's a mainstream in BDSM subculture, which can be as ignorant and disapproving of its outliers as mainstream culture itself was historically ignorant of BDSM. And so human nature goes…]**

**And I don't disagree.**

**HOWEVER…I am aware, through the fact of my reluctantly-at-times-continued existence, that not all who submit feel strong. Or remotely sexually-satisfied. Indeed, and this is THE CRUX OF THE MATTER for me in all I write, some of us unfortunate souls are wired to be submissive at all times, not just in the chosen confines of the bedroom. Or helicopter.**

**Of course, the sadly predictable results of this nature paired with the brutal world and the often damaged, unkind people in it tend to be a lot more scary and painful, not to mention permanent, than bruising on the butt or rope burn on the wrists. So I have to ask myself: given the everyday reality of my life, is it wise to allow my animal self access to images of a shy and self-effacing young woman being aggressively pursued by a powerful, painstakingly moral man wanting to oversee and control every aspect of her life ****_in order to make her safe and happy?_**

**There is a term I encountered in my own research into the BDSM community—inspired as so many others have been I'm sure by MOTU and the shocking idea that the way I am might actually be seen by certain others as attractive instead of repulsive, sad or funny. I share this term with you because I haven't been able to think of a better descriptor for the way being me feels, when "relational high-feeler" just doesn't cut it. The term is, "profoundly submissive," and it fits. **

**It is a dangerous fit, however, because the people using that term, as far as I know, are mostly in one of the outlying BDSM groups, one that advocates for a relational ideal of involuntary servitude, using language that I object to and advocating for profoundly submissive people to help themselves by throwing themselves on the mercy of those willing to be dominant towards them. **

**Um, can we say, "Recipe for disaster?" Yes, even someone calling herself "codependent liza" doesn't think it wise to pursue a future based on pleasing whoever is willing to let you serve them. **

**However, the relief of knowing I am not the only person who is almost constitutionally incapable of saying "No" in interaction with others is as profound as the term, so I offer it to those of you like me, hoping you too can feel better, or at least less ashamed, about all the negative fall-out from this frustrating characteristic of ourselves. **

**I cannot overstate how freeing, how transformative it is to understand all the well-intentioned f-ups of one's life not as the result of being a fundamentally bad or defective person, but at least in part the logical consequence of being a (profoundly) submissive person often necessarily unprotected or unintentionally exploited by those around you and made vulnerable by the fickle and frequently heartless social norms of our violent, dangerous, entropy-laden universe and culture. (To paraphrase the hyper-sexualized female cartoon character from a long-ago movie about Roger Rabbit, "I'm just drawn like this.")**

**Understanding ourselves this way doesn't change our responsibility—and right—to carry our own spiritual burdens for who we are and what we do with our lives, but I do believe it can make the burdens easier to bear and understand and more fruitful to carry, for our own good and the good of others around us. And all this fanfiction I write? It's my coping mechanism for the times when the burdens are so heavy, and though I know it will never happen this way for me, I long to feel the emotional panacea of the ****_idea_**** of someone vaguely ****_like me_**** finding safety and love in this horribly unsafe world.**

**So blessings on those of you who go see the movie, and on those of you who don't (especially those who will then later buy the DVD and obsessively watch their favorite parts over and over and over again—we know who we are!), and on all of us trying to "hack [our] way through the wilderness" (a "Last of the Mohicans" movie quote) of this existence with as much love, wisdom and fortitude as we can muster—which all too often seems not quite enough. It's better than nothing, though, and much better for those around you than just giving up.**

**With love, with "profound" thanks to EL James and Stephenie Meyer, and with sadly-little butt-bruising (wink, wink),**

**liza**

**XxXxXx**

Edward Cullen was walking his date, one Miss Rosalie Hale, in to her Manhattan apartment building late on a Thursday night in September when he found himself, most uncharacteristically, accepting Rose's cheerful invitation to come upstairs for coffee.

Normally, Edward would have turned Rose down. To him it did not matter that Rosalie Hale was a spectacularly-dressed blond bombshell, nor that she was a sharp and witty conversationalist, nor even that she was a savvy and skillful employment-law attorney just beginning to ride the swell of her own success. Edward was not a man looking for a partner, in business or in his personal life, and being perfectly capable of getting his physical needs met in a private manner that suited him, he was disinclined to date or socialize any more than was made necessary by his business and his family.

It had been family, after all, that had set him up tonight. His little sister Alice, to be precise, who was getting ready to be engaged to Rosalie's step-brother Jasper. This family connection had seemed a very strong argument to Edward _not_ to risk alienating Rose's feelings towards him specifically and his family in general with what he felt certain would be a non-starter of an evening, but Alice took the opposite perspective of seeing how nice and cozy it would be if Edward and Rosalie hit it off, and nagged and cajoled and wheedled and whined until her long-suffering and rather doting adopted big brother said, "Alright, Alice, one night. One disastrous night so that you will leave me alone!"

Edward was glad the benefit dinner had not been a disaster after all, and knew he'd have to eat a little crow on Alice's plate in consequence. But he didn't mind, especially with how grateful he was to know Rosalie had no interest in him either—a fact she'd shared with admirable bluntness during the limo ride on their way home.

It must have been that relief at being let off the hook of Rosalie's potential hurt feelings and expectations that had him saying "Yes" to her coffee offer, he concluded in the elevator on the way up. That and his genuine enjoyment, now that he felt free to enjoy her so without worrying about sending mixed signals, of Rose's rather crude sense of humor and her withering commentary on the egos and foibles of the high-society types they'd both spent their lives around.

Well, most of his life, anyway.

And so Edward had spent a pleasant half-hour drinking Rosalie's coffee and laughing at her imitations of various New York elites.

He was just sitting up in his chair, getting ready to take his leave, his hostess turned away as she emptied her own coffee cup into the kitchen sink (one of two—like any self-respecting upper-crust New Yorker, Rosalie had a gourmet kitchen even though she rarely used it), when he caught sight of a young girl standing, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, in the hallway leading off from the kitchen.

Staring back at the girl, Edward plastered a half-smile on his face and tried not to make any sudden movements. He was used to scaring small children by accident; it used to bother him, how easily certain young people would cry and look for their mothers when he tried to be friendly, but he'd long since accepted that it was a necessary consequence of the aggressive power he radiated. He had also decided being whiny-child-repellent was not a negative.

Still, Edward had a very tender heart underneath all that aggression, and there was something so vulnerable in appearance about the particular, non-whining child in front of him, that he wanted to do his best to offset his obviously disturbing presence in what he assumed to be her kitchen. So he said to his host, who was still oblivious to the girl's arrival, "Rose, I didn't know you had a little sister. Does she live with you all the time?"

At the sound of his voice, as calm and low-key as he had tried to pitch it, he saw the girl flinch, and then wrap her arms around her torso as if she'd just felt a cold wind blow by her. Then her head ducked and he lost eye contact as she tucked her chin towards her chest, looking like she was expecting an onslaught from an angry grizzly bear and was just too petrified to run.

Inwardly, Edward laughed harshly at how ineffective she would be against a bear, let alone someone like him. And that thought made him mad—at himself and any peers he may have in scaring this girl. Which made him uncomfortable, not understanding why he would give a flying f- who did what to this girl and how she would feel about it.

So he looked away from the silent girl trying to hide in plain sight and towards Rose, who was just turning back from the sink and now returning his questioning gaze with a surprised expression.

"What are you talking about?" she asked him, obviously mystified.

In answer, Edward tipped his head towards the waif in the doorway without looking back himself.

Rose lifted her eyes in the direction Edward indicated, and Edward watched as understanding dawned. "_Oh_…"

There was a short pause as Rose processed it all, then smiled. Her eyes still on the small person, warmth and humor were in them now instead of surprise, and maybe also a layer of…concern? Edward found himself—despite his own selfish worldliness—immediately and inexplicably curious about why the girl would bring out such maternal emotions in the reasonably selfish, worldly woman he knew Rosalie Hale to be.

"Edward Cullen, please let me introduce you to my roommate, Isabella Swan. Bella, this is Edward. He's an alright guy, I promise. Do you want some cocoa?"

Edward was nonplussed in quick succession by Rosalie's admission to having a roommate (not something he would have supposed likely), her characterization of him as "an alright guy," (was that a compliment or not, he wondered dryly), and Rose's warmly nurturing enquiry towards the surprise roommate as to whether she wanted some … _cocoa? _ What was she, 10?

Which is what he had assumed, really; that she was 10 or 12 or maybe 14, with a small frame and a juvenile taste in nightwear but intelligent eyes that didn't look as if they belonged to a middle-schooler. But they sure didn't look adult, either. So what did Rosalie mean with that crack about the girl being her roommate? And once again, why the f- did he care?

Edward had turned back to the girl in the doorway as he processed these things, so he was able to watch as Rose started moving towards her and the girl finally stopped her wide-eyed staring at Edward, her eyes flicking towards Rose before her face flamed—Edward saw the color rise—and she turned on her heels and soundlessly fled back down the hallway.

Rose halted her movement at Bella's sudden departure, lowering her outstretched hand with an audible sigh. And an even more audible "Shit."

Quirking his eyebrows at this "Bella"'s strange and anti-social behavior, something he wasn't too quick to judge being prone to a fair amount of it himself, Edward looked at Rose and said, tongue-in-cheek, "Was it something I said?"

Pulling out the chair across from Edward's, Rose dropped down into it and said, "No, for once Edward, it's not about you. It's all her. Bella is absolutely freaked out by men."

Tilting his head to consider this news, Edward seemingly idly asked, "Bad experience?"

Looking at a swirl in the marble of her tabletop as she absent-mindedly rubbed at it, Rose answered, "Not that I've been able to figure out. Just…" and she raised her eyes to stare directly into Edward's as she answered, "Shy."

Edward looked back down the hallway where the girl had disappeared, and from down which he had heard the click of a door firmly closing a few seconds after she fled. Then he grinned and said, "That seems an understatement."

Rose laughed, and stopped rubbing the spot, sitting back in her chair again, her usual confident, sexy poise returned with one arm draped over the chair back. "I know."

There was a moment, a pregnant pause, during which the two people far too alike to be lovers but both attracted by the other enough to be willing to be friends stared at each other. Their thoughts, though headed different directions, were on the same track, and that track was Isabella's. Or Bella's, in Rose's mind.

Rosalie had just had the rather shocking insight that perhaps she had been mistaken in trying to find ever more milder and milquetoast men to help her former college roommate and best friend slash unofficial little sister out of her shell. In watching Bella's terrified reaction to Edward's mere presence in the room, she realized that power didn't just repel Bella; it attracted her as well. In spite of herself, true…but Rosalie knew perfectly well how to use aggressive manipulation to make Bella do the things Rose wanted her to do, and in Rose's admittedly-biased opinion, Bella was much the better for them. So, maybe applying that principle to Bella's so far non-existent love life…

Meanwhile, Edward was first considering how Rosalie and the little mouse of a girl called Isabella (he liked that name, and ignored the nickname as something better fitting a dog, a high-maintenance poodle perhaps) ever connected, and coming to the correct conclusion that school had had something to do with it, moved quickly on to wondering what Isabella was doing now in her room. When he found himself speculating as to whether she was as child-like underneath her nightgown as she was above it, he pushed his chair back and stood, clearing his throat as he tried to clear his mind of any further thoughts about Rose's odd roommate.

He utterly failed, much to his dismay and disgust. Dismay because Isabella seemed like such an improbable candidate for attention from someone like himself, and disgust because he failed to see how any involvement with him could do anything but hurt her.

And yet, when he was giving his personal secretary (he had two secretaries in his business office, one to oversee work-related matters and the other to attend to everything else and manage his schedule as well) her marching orders the next morning, which included sending Rosalie Hale a sophisticated and very expensive arrangement of flowers ("No roses," he was careful to specify) as a thank-you for the night before, he found himself—without any forethought or permission from his conscious mind—including instructions for a separate, smaller arrangement ("Something sweet, old-fashioned; almost Victorian" he heard himself instructing the nodding secretary) to be sent to the same address but for one Miss Isabella Swan.

"How would you like the card to read?" his secretary asked, pen poised.

Edward stared back at her, unresponsive besides a slow blink.

The secretary looked up from the blank spot on her notebook, surprised by the pause. Normally she made full use of her skills in old-fashioned shorthand to keep up with Mr. Cullen—he hated the sound of clicking computer keys when he was trying to think. She saw him seemingly lost in thought, his eyes now focused beyond her, out the window perhaps, his brows slightly drawn together, a small frown on his face.

Breathing in and out once, twice, the secretary finally asked, hesitant, "Mr. Cullen, sir? Was there a message you wanted included?"

Quickly Edward's eyes shot back to his waiting secretary, and he shook off the uncertainty that had just overcome him, saying in his usual assured style, "No particular message, just my regards."

The secretary nodded as she jotted that down, but a second later Edward Cullen broke from the norm again and reached out across the desk as if he would have touched her arm if his desk weren't so big there were no way he could reach her. "Angela," he said, surprising the secretary with his use—very infrequent—of her first name, "Better make it my _warm_ regards."

And he smiled.

Surprised again, but responding as any non-comatose heterosexual woman would to the breathtaking beauty and sex appeal of Edward Cullen's smile, Angela smiled back before looking down to make the note, catching her breath as she did so in order to reply, "Absolutely, Mr. Cullen."

And they were back to business as usual.

Bella, on the other hand, was not feeling "usual" at all. Completely discomfited by her accidental run-in with one of Rose's many boy-friends the night before—in her nightgown, to make it even worse—Bella woke up feeling anxious and out of sorts, much more than usual.

She tried to follow her own routine, going for a jog in the park and making breakfast for both her and Rose, who had said a quick "Good-night" to her the night before but hadn't made any reference to the Greek god who'd been sitting in their kitchen. Bella had been too shy and embarrassed to ask any questions, but her mind kept straying back to that man and how incredible it had felt to be near him; to be looked at by him.

For Bella had felt every micro-second of Edward's attention; she had simultaneously burned and been in ecstasy by it. And she hated herself for both reactions: the attraction and the fear. Over and over again she told herself, "Rose said she had a nice time. That means she's not into him; that means I won't see him again. Stop thinking about him, you big fat loser!"

But no matter how she beat herself up and berated herself, she couldn't keep her thoughts from wandering back to the electrifying, terrifyingly-hopeful image of Edward Cullen looking straight at her, as if he knew what he was looking at more than she did.

After a trying day at work in the editorial office of a small but well-regarded publisher, where she was a very junior assistant in the children's books department, Bella came home in the rain to an empty apartment with groceries for dinner. She had forgotten that Rose was out again, this time for dinner and drinks with work friends.

Reading the note that Rose had left her on the table, reminding her of these plans and telling her not to wait up with a winky-smiley-face for good measure, Bella was overcome with a feeling of sad loneliness…until she read the p.s.

"We both got flowers from Edward Cullen today. I put yours on the desk in your room. You should call to say 'Thank you.' His number is: 212-" and Bella's eyes widened a bit as she stared down at the actual phone number for the insanely rich and successful (she hadn't been able to help herself and had done a little Googling on her lunch break, discovering Edward was a self-made billionaire after developing the technology Holy Grail of a so-far hacker-proof financial-transaction system for cell phone and internet use) not to mention unbelievably good-looking (she hadn't needed Google to know that) Edward Cullen. Sometimes being friends with Rose was overwhelmingly stressful for a middle-class girl from small-town Washington state, and this was definitely one of those times.

Making herself finish the p.s., she saw, "Don't worry; he won't bite. More's the pity!" with another winky smiley face.

Bella couldn't help but laugh at Rose's ending joke; she loved her friend's self-confidence and intelligence, and Rose in turn loved having a friend with whom she could always be both those things and not worry about the impact on her perceived sex appeal or social standing.

As soon as she was done with the laugh, however, Bella wanted to vomit. Call Edward Cullen! Rose had to be kidding!

But she wasn't, Bella knew. Rosalie was an absolute stickler for social niceties and decorum, no matter how uncomfortable Bella felt. This was confirmed when a phone call from Rose lit up Bella's phone a few moments later.

"Bella? How was your day?"

"Okay, thanks. How was yours?"

"Perfect. I love not having a hangover—I'll try to remember that tonight. So have you called him yet to say 'Thank you'?"

"Called who?" Bella tried to stall.

Rose wasn't having it. "You know perfectly well who, Bella Swan, and I swear if you haven't called him by the time I'm home I'm going to make you do it then. No matter what time it is."

"But Rose—" Bella tried to protest.

Rose wouldn't let her. "But nothing, Bella. That man spent a small fortune on flowers for us, and we _both_ need to tell him how much we appreciate it. Because I for one intend on enjoying his company, and his limo service, again in the future. And it wouldn't kill you to participate either."

"Rose, couldn't you just tell him how much I appreciate it too? I'm sure he just sent flowers to me to be polite."

Rose snorted, and then said, "Have you seen them yet? He was not just being polite. Edward Cullen pays attention. I think he liked you."

"Rose, you're imagining things! I didn't say one word to him. He didn't have time to like me."

"And whose fault was that?"

"Rose, please; you know how I feel about men. Can't I just send him a thank-you note?"

Bella was close to tears, and Rose knew she needed to back off just a little or risk Bella putting her foot down. It didn't happen often, but she was really good at it when she did.

"No, sweetie, you need to call, but you can make it quick. If you call right now he'll probably be at dinner and it will go to voicemail and you can just leave a message."

Undone by Rose's sweetness, as Rose knew she would be, Bella groaned at the inevitability of it. "But what if I interrupt his dinner? Isn't it rude to call now?"

"No, the rule on no phone calls sticks to the old-fashioned middle-class dinner hours of 5 to 7. It's perfectly appropriate to call after 7. Kind of like how everyone drinks on Sundays but lots of liquor stores aren't open. It's a custom dating back to outdated ways but we keep it because otherwise life is chaos. Weren't you paying attention in sociology?"

"You know I was, Rose, but they didn't cover phone calls to the insanely rich and gorgeous in that class. You should know; you were there."

"Not so much, I wasn't; but you were, and that was good enough for me to get an A-. That and making doe eyes at that jerk of a professor."

Bella laughed, remembering how much Prof. Gerandy would sweat in Rose's presence. "That wasn't very nice of you, Rose," she said, gently chiding, but with affection in her tone.

"It wasn't very nice of him to be looking at college-aged students when he was married and retiring in a year," Rose countered.

"True," Bella said cheerfully, almost having forgotten about the phone call hanging over her head in the walk down memory lane back to easier times.

Not that those times were easy when they happened, of course. Rose didn't know this, but Bella had had to ward off an unwanted advance from that very same professor.

Rose would have killed Prof. Gerandy if she knew, or at least had him kicked out of his tenure position and financially ruined, so Bella had made up a failed paper as a reason for the B she got in the class. Bella had been so sure the episode had all been her fault, that somehow she had sent out the wrong signals, that she had been relieved that the grade hadn't been any lower and had gone on with a sense of a horrible hurdle cleared.

If she had known that really he was an unrepentant smarmy low-life who was going to make more unwanted advances to an even more vulnerable girl the very next semester, she would have told Rose and let him face the consequences. But she hadn't, and remained clueless, and was much more worried now about ringing Edward Cullen than about a long-ago lecher she had successfully evaded.

Which worry came back as Rose signed off, saying, "Just do it now, B, and get it over with. You'll be glad you did; I promise."

And Bella didn't have a chance to contradict her, because Rose was hailed just then by her work friends and she signed off, "Love you, Bella. See you later," and Bella just had time to say "Love you too, Rose; be careful," before Rosalie was gone.

Sighing, Bella disconnected her phone and set it down next to the paper with the dreaded phone number. Deciding the obvious first thing to do was to look at the flowers, Bella went in to her room—and had her breath taken away.

They were BEAUTIFUL. No, they were beyond beautiful…they were exquisite. Each bloom was radiant with color, steeped in the heady perfume of hothouse flowers allowed to grow at their own slow speed and nurtured with extravagant care, and each was just beginning its bloom. There were creamy white roses starting to unfurl, and sprigs of heather tightly bound to bursting with sweet purple color; there were deeper purple violets, which wouldn't last long but were remarkable for their rich tone and velvet petals. There were freesia and snowdrops—greenhouse babies for certain, so out of season—and in the ultimate indulgence, a few fine specimens of purple orchids, their elegant beauty highlighting perfectly the delicate gorgeousness of the bouquet.

All these botanical treasures in artful arrangement together were indeed breathtakingly lovely, shown off in a short, wide-mouthed crystal vase with sparkling glass stones making even the water full of color, and with a luscious purple silk ribbon bow tied around the top. Tucked into this ribbon, nestled in the verdant greens and under the cheerful buds of a sprig of heather, was a small white card made of thick paper embossed around the edges, and as richly elegant as the rest of the arrangement.

In the middle of the card, in neatly hand-written black ink, was the message:

"With warm regards, Edward Cullen."

As Bella read this, she let go of the card as if it had bitten her, then watched in shock as the heavy white paper fluttered to the carpeted floor of her room like a descending butterfly. It landed with the words face up, as if to mock her.

Or so Bella felt as she turned on her heels and ran out of her room, uncharacteristically slamming the door behind her. She didn't stop until she was back in the relative safety of the kitchen, and leaning against a chair as she tried to catch her breath. Calming down in the mundane everdayness of her surroundings, she bit her lip hard as she tried not to cry, which she—for some ridiculous, unfathomable-to-her-because-she-didn't-want-to-fathom-it reason—very much felt compelled to do.

Several deep breaths with closed eyes later, and she was in control again…but when she opened her eyes to see Rose's note laying on the table, reminding her of unmet obligations and unasked-for flowers from insufferably handsome and arrogant and very scary men (well, one man, but he felt like an army in the moment to Bella), she was seized with one of her moments of righteous anger. Wisely making the most of it, Bella grabbed up her modest, old-fashioned cell phone from the table where she'd left it after her conversation with Rose, and typed—more like, punched—in the digits from Rose's note.

Almost forgetting she was dialing a phone number, Bella perfunctorily lifted the phone after hitting "Send," and had just begun to feel the nervous butterflies in her stomach multiplying from the single white specimen that had fallen out of her hands in her bedroom earlier when a tense, terse, distinctly-unfriendly male voice said in her ear, "Who is this?"

So surprised was Bella at the unexpected attack that the phone fell from her hand and hit the kitchen table, bouncing once hard before falling further to the floor. Standing and staring in horror at it for a few moments, Bella heard a voice still coming from the phone. She couldn't tell, but the voice was warmer now, concern starting to bleed in with the previous defensiveness. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

And then, as Edward on the other end of the line opened his eyes wide and fully remembered whom he had just sent flowers to and whom, according to Rosalie whose properly-ID'd text had come through a couple hours earlier, would be calling him from her pay-as-you-go-no-caller-ID cell phone (Rosalie hadn't told him that part, but he was piecing it together now), the voice warmed considerably and he asked, much more gently this time, "May I ask who's calling?"

But it was too late for Isabella, who by then had the terrifying phone back in her hand and just managed to hit the disconnect button before sitting down in the chair in front of her and bursting into tears.

The tears were short-lived, and she was just wiping her cheeks and shoving the whole episode into the locked closet in her mind where all scary, shameful things were stored when…the phone, back on the table, rang.

Bella jumped, staring at it. Willing it to stop making that noise. It kept ringing.

Against her better judgment, Bella looked at the display, and saw—to her horror—"E Cullen" and the recently-dialed number staring back at her.

She sat frozen, watching as the phone moved slightly with the vibration of each ring. Finally, after the requisite four torturous rings, it stopped.

Only to start up again a few seconds later.

It was the third round of ringing when Bella finally gathered the resolve, though her eyes were closed, to lift the offending phone off the table and gingerly hold it to her ear, bravely hitting "Accept Call" as she did so.

Immediately, her eyes squenched together like she was in physical pain, Bella heard a recently-familiar voice saying, "Miss Swan? Isabella, are you alright?"

Edward had verified his suspicion about the identity of his hang-up caller with a quick text to Rose, who was now biting her lip (a habit she'd unknowingly picked up from Bella) in anxiety for her friend dangling over the precipice of direct contact with a living Adonis and masterful, well, Master—no matter that she, Rose, herself had pushed Bella to the edge and then some.

Bella managed to stop biting her own lip just long enough to force out, "Yes, I'm fine, thank you Mr. Cullen." Then, carried along by the current of her voice speaking and determined to get this necessary torture over with, she quickly started in on, "I'm so sorry—"

But she was interrupted immediately in her intended combo apology-thank you, by Edward neatly overriding her words with the beginning of his own apology. "Not at all, Miss Swan—may I call you Isabella?"

And sagely waiting as long as necessary for his conversation partner to manage to think of a response and then find a voice to speak it, Edward waits for a number of heartbeats—Bella's being almost loud enough for him to hear—until a soft voice squeaks back, "Of course, Mr. Cullen."

To which Edward laughs, remarkably gently, and says, so matter-of-fact but they both know it's direct frontal assault on Isabella's pretense of any personal boundaries at all, "Then you have to call me Edward, sweetheart. Okay?"

There's another long pause, which Edward waits out with ever-growing confidence that he has absolute control over this surprising young woman reluctantly hovering on the periphery of his life, and equally growing though much more surprising confidence that whoever and whatever she is, she's worth any effort he might bestow on her. _Why_ he feels this way he is not yet sure, but his instincts are sublimely certain about her potential value to him—and Edward is a man who trusts his instincts.

So he has moved away from the conference table where he was immersed in a late-in-the-day strategy session with his top advisors on an emerging overseas billion-dollar business deal, (Edward having used the gargantuan proceeds from his financial software to fund his private company's very-satisfying venture into the buying, refurbishing and most-remunerative selling of troubled businesses around the globe), and is standing at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows he favors, at work and at home, (there not currently being much distinction for him between those two environments, other than the uniforms he wears). He appears to be lost in thought, staring out over the New York City skyline, but really he is pouring all his considerable powers of concentration and elucidation into this slow-moving conversation with the most reluctant conversation partner he's ever had the tingling pleasure of engaging.

When he hears her soft, "Okay," with no mention of his name whatsoever, Edward grins—and decides to enjoy himself a little.

"Okay, who, Isabella?" he says back to her, sprinkling his soft, gentle inquiry with just the slightest flavor of expectative authority.

It works, and sooner than before, he hears, not just quickened breathing, but a stuttering, "O-o-[inhale]-okay, Mr.-Mr.-Mr. Edward," and she ends her attempt at being familiar with him—the equivalent of a terrified fairy-tale princess reaching out to stroke a dragon's head, as ordered by the dragon—with the tiniest sob of an exhale.

Edward closes his eyes and inhales deeply himself, enjoying the exquisite emotional bouquet being presented to him as much as any gourmand ever enjoyed a particular pairing of fine wine and French cuisine. And certainly far more, he realizes, than Bella could possibly have appreciated the beauty of the mere flowers he had sent her.

Smiling to himself at the unfair discrepancy in their exchanges already, and ruefully anticipating the ledger only getting more distorted over time, Edward says with absolutely satisfied approval, "Good girl, Isabella. You're a very good girl."

At which unasked for, completely unexpected but desperately desired sentiment Isabella of course starts to cry. Hard.

Leaning against the kitchen table, her forehead in one hand, Bella lets her phone-hand drop into her lap as she sobs for a few moments.

Then, the initial shock wearing off enough for her to start to feel horrified about her bad manners, she lifts the phone back up and says, tears in her voice and frequent sniffing, "I'm so—"

But she doesn't get any more out before Edward interrupts again, this time saying, "Isabella, have you eaten dinner yet?"

Surprised by the abrupt change in topic and the lack of any reference to her hysterics, Bella's tears dry up and she is able to answer reasonably quickly, albeit uncertainly, "Um, no?"

Edward grins again at this, resisting the urge to tease her about her question-answer, and instead announces, "Neither have I. Any objections to me as a dining companion?"

And Edward laughs out loud, though swallowing it quickly to turn it into a cough-chuckle, as Bella repeats herself, her incredulity announcing itself in every syllable with her fear tap-dancing in the background at a heretofore unbelievable pace, like a 1950's Donald O'Connor on speed, "Um, no?"

The last syllable rose so high she ended in a squeak, and Edward's mind moved on from musical theater to cat-and-mouse, lion-and-prey analogies, considering whether Isabella was more gazelle or antelope.

As he decided with satisfaction that she was something much less gamey and far more domestic, a fluffy little white lamb perhaps, he was responding to Isabella with his full-bore authority work voice, "Very good then, Isabella, shall I pick you up in—say [and Edward checked his watch and did a mental glance down the check-list of what would have to happen to rearrange his evening in this way]—half-an-hour?"

Unknowingly, Edward had over-shot his mark and sent Isabella careening from overwhelmed obedience into shocked resistance and retreat.

Though he figured that out fast when, after a couple seconds of silence, and then a couple more, he said, expectantly, "Isabella?" and got back, "Um, Mr.-Mr….Mr. Edward? I'm sorry, I think there's some sort of mis-"

Edward wouldn't let her say the nasty word. "Absolutely not, Isabella; at least not on my end. I can understand if you would rather not spend the night in my company, however." Hoping he was remedying with undeserved guilt what he had caused with overapplication of stern authority, Edward waited to see what his mark would make of that.

To his relief, it had his intended effect this time, and a horrified Isabella managed to say, "Oh, no, of course I would love to-to-to spend the night with you-" at which faux pas Edward grinned _again_ and Bella blushed so hard Edward could sense it over the phone.

Deciding it best to ignore rather than tease the highly-flustered girl at this point, Edward continued matter-of-factly with, "Good. Then I'll pick you up outside your place at—" checking his watch again, Edward finished "eight o'clock. But Isabella?"

Isabella was speechless, and just nodded, which wasn't much help to Edward. Trying again, he said, "Isabella, are you still there?"

Blinking, Bella came back a little from her mental oblivion with a question she could actually answer and got out, "Y-yes?"

"Wait for me _inside_ the building, all right, sweetheart?" He paused a moment, letting it sink in, then repeated, speaking slowly and deliberately as if to a small child or someone mentally impaired, "I'll come in for you. Wait for me _inside_."

And feeling reassured that this flustered, adorable girl-woman wouldn't be standing alone at night on a New York city sidewalk waiting for him, Edward heard her soft, hesitant "Okay" and turned around to head back to the table and wrap up his business for the night.

"Good. Be safe, Isabella, and I'll see you soon."

The finality in his tone brought forth a reflex response in Bella, even though she was not at all comfortable with the one-sided arrangements Edward Cullen had just pushed through. To her great frustration, she heard her own voice saying, "Bye, Edward," and that maddening voice saying back, "Good-bye, sweetheart," before disconnecting.

Edward Cullen was coming to see _her_? Edward Cullen was coming to pick her up to go out to dinner in (now) less than half-an-hour?! It was unbelievable! It was incredible! It was TERRIFYING!

And as it turned out, it was absolutely impossible. But that's another chapter.

THE END (for now)


	2. Chapter 2

**A short update, but you've got to give me credit for speed! This is my (rather irresponsible to my real-life responsibilities, but life is short!) version of a count-down to Friday's movie that I won't be seeing. Hope you enjoy! (More to follow, but probably not as fast.) xo liza**

**XxXxXx**

Bella's first reaction upon regaining the ability to move after her mind-blowing and terrifying phone call with Edward Cullen was to drop her traitorous phone back on the kitchen table and run for her room. Accidentally slamming the door behind her she closes it with such vigor, she moves straight to her bed and flies onto it, grabbing a pillow as she lands and shoving her head into it. Hunched over and almost hyperventilating, she has her eyes squeezed shut and is trying to close her mind to any thoughts or memories of the last fifteen minutes.

Experiencing some temporary success in blanking out her mind and focusing only on calming down her breathing, Isabella is immediately undone again when she slowly raises her head... and catches sight of the amazing bouquet on her desk.

Not only the visual assaults her, but once she sees the flowers she realizes she can smell them too, and even shoving her head into her pillow again can't get the sensory memory of their sweet fragrance out of her conscious awareness.

Which means she can't get Edward Cullen out of her conscious awareness…which means something else, some nagging fact both desperately dangerous and urgent keeps trying to come back in and completely overwhelm her. Which means she has to escape the room.

Leaping up off the bed, she trips on her own work shoes and falls hard to the floor, bruising her knee—but she hardly notices and is up again right away, surveying her room for a place to flee.

Finding nothing safe enough, she flings her door open again and looks up and down the hallway, weighing her options before running for Rose's room, the master suite at the end of the hall. Once there, Bella turns on the lights and makes a bee-line straight for Rose's capacious closet. Leaving the door open but not turning on the closet light, she heads for the very back and crawls underneath Rose's hanging formal gowns, curling up in a corner with an old ski jacket for a pillow.

Laying there in the relative dark, the apartment quiet except for the occasional honking noise from the taxis outside or the scraping of chairs from the suite up above, Bella calms down—so much so that she falls asleep.

Meanwhile, Edward Cullen is whipping through the necessary conversations to clear his schedule for the impromptu dinner date he believes he just arranged, starting with bringing the work conference he was leading when Bella's first phone call came through to an early close. There's no grumbling from his underlings at this unprecedented development, as they are all too happy to agree to reconvene the following morning-several of them knowing they will be spending their evening and night trying to adequately answer the questions he's already posed and grateful for the time to prep better for their perfectionistic, brilliant, aggressive but fair and generously-rewarding boss, and the rest happy for the surprising early end to their day and the opportunity to make their own impromptu dinner plans.

Having alerted his driver and personal security detail to bring the car around, Edward makes the rest of his arrangements from the backseat as Taylor—a fatherly-appearing middle-aged ex-Navy SEAL in a crewcut and suit, easy to underestimate with his low-key appearance but supremely good at what he does, which is: ensure Edward always gets to where he wants to be on time and with as little inconvenience as possible (to Edward, that is)—and arrives back at Rose and Isabella's building less than 24 hours after leaving it the night before. He smiles to himself at that fact, not being used to visiting the homes of casual dates more than once…especially given the number of his casual dates in recent years is fewer than the fingers on one hand.

To be precise, it's one—and that one only gone on as a hard-fought concession to an irritatingly meddlesome but affectionate and appreciated little sister.

So to find himself back at the scene of the crime against his own self-protective rules is a little surprising. But, he consoles himself, this has nothing to do with dating. This is a…welfare check, and he nods to himself as he thinks that term. Just a follow-up nicety made necessary by his accidental rudeness to a little girl on the phone tonight.

Well, not really a little girl; a woman who just looks and acts like a little girl. Which is, Edward thinks as he exits the door Taylor is holding open for him, somehow even more concerning.

Turning to Taylor, Edward says, "Wait here, please; we should be right out," then turns back towards the building and strides in the front entryway to retrieve the girl in question.

Looking at his watch when he fails to see said girl waiting for him on the other side of the glass inner entryway doors, he realizes he's five minutes early—a remarkable feat in NYC rush hour traffic and testament to the quality of his driver, bodyguard, and almost-friend. Smiling, he dials the girl's number, and hears it ring, then go to voicemail. He tries again. Gets voicemail again.

So he pulls out the big guns and calls his one-time casual date.

"Rosalie, hello."

"Edward Cullen. What did you do now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Bella isn't answering her phone. What did you say to her?"

"That's why I'm calling you. She won't pick up, and she's not down to meet me. Does she usually run late?"

"Yes, but that's beside the point. What are you doing picking her up? You didn't mention that to me!"

"Are you your roommate's keeper?" Edward winced a little after he said that, because he realized, indeed Rosalie was, and he'd just admitted her right to have a say in this situation. Cursing himself, he listened to Rosalie respond gleefully, as he would have in her shoes,

"Why yes, indeed I am. And you haven't cleared anything by me. Though I must say, the flowers were lovely and can be considered adequate toll for one night."

Edward laughed, glad Rose was in a playful mood because he wanted to keep this situation light. That's all it was, after all—a nice gesture on his part. "Don't you mean bribe?" he teased.

"Only if your intentions are less than I was giving you credit for," Rose leered back, but with a warning edge to the tone, letting Edward clearly know that his intentions better not be anything of the sort.

He was quick to reassure both her and himself. "My intentions are impeccable, Rose, and G-rated, I assure you. I felt bad about scaring that little rabbit of a roommate of yours, and when she finally took my call earlier I talked her into going to dinner with me. I thought maybe I could convince her that I'm not such a scary guy."

"Only you are such a scary guy, so that was bad logic," Rose returned, in a surprisingly warning voice.

Edward chose to stay light. "Oh, come on, Rose, I don't look that bad," he laughingly rejoined.

"Edward, be serious a minute. She's not answering my calls either. Which means she's upset. Or she's lost her cell phone again, but the fact that you're standing in our lobby and she's not seems to indicate the former. And that's not good."

The lightness and humor Edward was trying to maintain evaporated instantly, to his frustration and, rather unbelievably to himself, fear. "Then what do I do?" he asked Rose, as serious as Rose could ever have wished for—maybe a little too serious for their mutual comfort.

Rose sighed, then, thinking aloud, said, "Well, I'm too far downtown to make it back in less than 45 minutes, 30 minutes if we're really lucky, so probably the best thing is for you to try and fix this yourself."

"I'm game; tell me how," Edward interjected.

"I'll give you the access code to get you in the building, and then you go up and knock on the door. If she's not totally round the bend, she'll answer it; if she doesn't, then you need to go next door to 6B and ask Mrs. Cope for our emergency key. She's a batty old lady, but she loves Bella, so just say you're a friend and you're worried that Bella's sick and you need to check on her. I'll call Mrs. Cope first and tell her it's okay, but you'll have to repeat the story—she hates me and probably won't give me a chance to explain."

"Mrs. Cope, 6B, sick Isabella, got it," Edward said back.

"Good. Now this part is really important…" and Rosalie broke off, as she realized that she was about to share some highly personal information about her best friend with a man that neither one of them knew very well…although, she consoled herself, he was sooner or later probably going to be her step-brother-in-law, if she knew Jasper well at all (and she did), so really this was just bringing Edward into the family a little earlier than the formalities would dictate. And thereby having found a way to be okay with what she was about to say, Rosalie started with "Bel-" just as Edward broke in impatiently with, "_What?" _then heard Rosalie's voice and said, "Sorry, you were saying?"

Rosalie just hmmphed at his impatience, feeling both glad and worried for it, and continued, "Well, I was saying that Bella," and she took a deep breath and crossed her fingers that she wasn't about to be the worst friend in the world, ratting out her shy sweetheart of a roomie to an officious, aggressive man with a taste for…Rose wasn't sure what, the gossip around Edward Cullen wasn't nearly as specific as she would have liked, and was more speculation than fact, even with her inside connection to the family. The Cullens were extremely private, and even more protective of each other.

She paused again, and Edward lost it, letting fly with, "For God's sake, Rosalie, what the hell is wrong with your roommate? We're not getting any younger here!"

Rosalie was instantly pissed. "Fine, Edward, I'll handle it. You just leave and go about your business. Bella is none of your concern anyway."

Remorse and chagrin flooding him, Edward's response was immediate and genuine. "Rose, I'm sorry. I'm not a very patient man, I know. Please don't send me away; I really want to help. I…I feel a, I don't know, a connection to Isabella. And I want to undo whatever bad I did. Please tell me how?"

Mollified and reassured, Rose spills the beans. "I was trying to explain that Bella is a runner. I mean, she literally runs away when she gets upset. So when you go into the apartment, you'll want to be careful to stay between her, or wherever she may be, and the door."

"Oh," Edward said, processing this information. And a little surprised/disturbed at his physiological reaction to it, a reaction he had absolutely no intention of sharing with Rose. Or any other living human being. "All right, good strategy, Hale—I'll keep her pinned in and alert my driver to watch for her at the exit." There was a pause while they both reeled a little from the matter-of-fact rightness to Edward's attack plans for Isabella. Then he continued as an afterthought, "Any thoughts as to where she's likely to be in the apartment?"

Rose laughed. It was a little nervous, and a little real. "I know exactly where she'll be."

Edward smiled back. "Our Isabella is sounding like a creature of habit. Do tell."

"In the closet."

"What?" Edward was nonplussed by this; Isabella had seemed to be many things so far, but gay hadn't been one of them. What had he missed? Or was Rosalie joking-

"Literally in the closet, Edward. In _my_ closet, most likely—she really likes it in there. She wanted it for her bedroom, but I told her it wasn't big enough. And besides, I needed the closet for my clothes, of course. But you know Bella…well, you're getting to know her, anyway."

"She likes closets," Edward responded, somewhat dully, as if this was an unintelligible fact that he was just trying to learn by rote for later regurgitation.

"Yes. Closets and blankets and bears. Stuffed ones, anyway. Well, not just bears, anything soft and cuddly-" Rosalie broke off as she realized she was wandering away from the point.

"Ooo-kay, I'll keep that in mind," Edward responded, his eyebrows raised and his tone dry.

Now worried she'd scared off Bella's best prospect since Rose had met her, Rosalie came back with, "Give her a chance, Edward; I know she seems strange, but she's the best friend I've ever had. She's the best person I've ever known!"

Back in control of himself, Edward responds easily, "I have no problem believing that, Rose, and I don't have to give her a chance; I'm already convinced I want to make sure she's safe. And happy. I'm just finding myself a little…surprised by what that might entail."

Leaving any possible double entendres from Edward's point of view alone, Rose says warmly, "I know what you mean, Edward; and I trust you, or I wouldn't be letting you help."

"Thank you, Rosalie; I'm honored. You've been Isabella's best protector, I can see that much already. Now shall we proceed?"

"Yes, let's get this over with. Call right away when you've found her, will you? I can talk her down if you put your phone on speaker."

"Okay, that's my back-up plan if the Cullen charm fails me. Now what's the code?"

And Rose gave it over, and in five seconds flat Edward Cullen was in the building.


	3. Chapter 3

**In addition to Twilight fanfiction, this middle-aged lady has another secret and highly-embarrassing pleasure to confess: her emotional enjoyment of the sweet melodies of those cherubic toddlers, One Direction. OMG, I can't help myself! **

**But I also can't look at them singing the music—so earnestly, with so much youthful naivete just pouring out from behind their oversized sunglasses-without erupting in giggles (whether at me or at them I'm not sure it matters—as long as I laugh with love), so I play it in the background while I'm doing dishes or writing fanfic. They all go well together, the incessant real-life drudgery necessitating the escapist fantasy life. And so my life hums along—quickly—to its end.**

**Meanwhile, however, I'm finding "Night Changes" to be the very appropriate theme music to my week, especially the line "Having no regrets is all that she really wants." Yes (and no, depending on how narrowly and spiritually one defines 'regrets'), and so here I am churning out this particular story with a frenzy borne of unusually consistent and clear in-my-head dialogue and the awareness of tonight [actually, three Fridays ago—I got interrupted in posting by real life] as a sort of cultural landmark…in which someone ****_almost _**** like me (except infinitely more beautiful, smart and sexually-appealing, but let's not nitpick) will be paraded on the cultural market stage and found, inevitably, ridiculous even while being aggravatingly compelling to a significant portion of the female audience. **

**Sort of like the reception of ****_New Moon_****, one of two movies (the other being ****_Dirty Girl_****) in which I've ever SEEN myself (the depressed part, not the being adored by gorgeous vampires part, duh), one review by a British male that particularly sticks in my brain being, "There's mopey, and then there's mopey-mopey-mopey-oh-my-God-in-heaven-when-will-this-ever-end-mopey," or something like that, and I had to laugh—because he had a point. But there's a point to New Moon, and "mopey" Bella, too.**

**Or a comfort, if you prefer. And I think I'm figuring out that this comfort is akin to helping the butterfly ignore the fact of the semi truck barreling down on its oblivious trajectory certain to cause the butterfly's oblivion. It's all so matter-of-fact, really, the way we are in our heads and hearts having nothing to do with the way the world is in its heartless laws of physics, and the collision between the two destroying us much more than the universe. So why be upset about it? Why get mad at the semi? Why not just enjoy the circuitous, lilting paths of our little lives, ignoring the imminent destruction because there's no way around it unless we stop being butterflies?**

**Maybe I am working on being a bird instead. Maybe that's the wisest course of action. But in my heart, somewhere, I hope I'll always be insubstantial and light as air, un-self-consciously beautiful as I spend my days in sunshine, seeking out the beauty and sweetness in the world around me.**

**And hoping, imagining, that somewhere there is a protected place where butterflies are free to stay that way til their old-age ends. Why? Because it would mean someone besides me can see their beauty, and therefore mine. And that's a welcome and rare affirming thought for this butterfly-become-a-wren. Or somedays, a crow. (Still not an eagle ;) .)**

**Much love,**

**liza the butterfly **

**XxXxXx**

As Edward strode towards the elevator bank in Rose and Bella's building, he passed by a family knot moving the same direction. A mother and nanny were hovering over toddler twins in a duo-stroller, while a cynical-looking 5-year-old stared with open calculation, tinged with derision, at Edward.

Edward raised his eyebrows at the frank appraisal the child gave him, chilled by the lack of both fear and any softer human feelings it contained. He was unsure whether to condemn the bumbling mother figures trying, equally ineptly, to coax leaking slushy cups out of the toddlers' grasps or feel sorry for them; he was absolutely certain, however, that he wanted to beat them all to the elevator and avoid their company on the ride up.

He would have made it, only the five-year-old, with a malicious grin on his face, takes after Edward at a run and barrels on the elevator just as the doors are closing. Edward is forced by both good manners and utter unwillingness to be alone with this Lord of the Flies-child in a confined space to hold the Open Doors button until the boy's entourage catch up to them; it takes an aggravating couple of minutes before everyone, with all their associated bags and accoutrement, are installed.

Finally, not a word of thanks or even acknowledgement having come from either woman towards Edward, he is able to let go of the hold button and hit the "6".

The women still say nothing to him as the elevator moves, the mother being too busy chastising the nanny for buying cherry flavored drinks, which would explain the red food coloring staining the front of the mother's own outfit not to mention the little boy's.

The nanny is alternating between a desperately placating "Yes, Mrs. Porterfield," and impassioned attempts at defending herself. "But you said you wanted them quiet on the trip home—they were quiet!"

Edward closes his eyes at the unpleasantness, but finds himself saying almost against his will, "Did you ladies want me to push a floor for you?"

There's a break in their back-and-forth as they both stare at him, as if it was a surprising, even nonsensical question. "Why, the penthouse, of course," the mother said, then tilted her head to study Edward more closely. "Do I know you?"

Edward realized belatedly she did indeed know him, she being the second—make that third—wife of his parents' investment advisor, an old-money man with a knack for producing sizably-increasing returns without a whiff of fraud.

But Edward didn't tell her that. He just smiled a very small smile and shook his head, grateful for the child who chose that moment to dump the last of her slushy down her front and then start screaming—whether from wet discomfort or frustration was anyone's guess.

As the elevator made a maddening stop onto an empty hallway on the fourth floor, Edward found the five-year-old staring at him again, quite rudely. Edward was about to return the rudeness by turning away—though not so far as to leave his back exposed to the reprobate—when he caught sight of something the boy was moving back and forth along the floor of the elevator. It happened to be a plush snow leopard, though all Edward could tell for sure was that it was a stuffed animal that looked soft. And cuddly.

As the elevator opened on the sixth floor, Edward hit the hold button again and turned back to the boy, still studying Edward with narrowed eyes. "What?" the boy asked sullenly.

The five-year-old's ostensible co-overseers were immersed in trying to comfort his still-screaming sister, so Edward addressed his question to the boy himself. "How much do you want for that stuffed animal?"

The boy lifted it up evaluatingly by the tail, as he'd been carrying it, and thought for a moment. Then looking Edward dead-on he said, "Fifty bucks."

Edward's not surprised; he had already pegged the kid for a greedy little beggar—and besides, fifty bucks was probably not too far north of what his mother had actually shelled out for it. Thinking of said mother, Edward turned to her—or to her bent back—and said, "Ma'am, would you object to me buying your son's stuffed animal?"

"What?" she asked, in a harassed tone, and with the sullen source of her son's attitude, as well as his rude linguistic habits, evident.

Deciding he'd better move fast before the boy decided he wanted to thwart Edward more than he wanted the power of Edward's money, Edward said to the mother, now looking up at him with a cross expression but still dabbing at a fresh spot on her shirt with a baby wipe, "Could I give your son fifty dollars in exchange for the stuffed animal he's carrying? He seems okay with it; of course, I will replace the animal as well. I assume you bought it at the zoo?" Edward wasn't going out on a limb; both sides of the stroller had a bright "Central Park Zoo" balloon tied to the handle.

The woman just stared at him for a moment, while the boy interjected, "I don't want another leopard. I want the big gorilla."

Edward turned back to him and acted out some hesitation, as if that might be too much, then stifled a grin as he saw the fear that he'd asked for too much and lost the deal flicker across the boy's eyes. It was a shame the child was so unpleasant; he could have made a skillful negotiator some day if only he were able to keep people in the same room with him.

After letting the boy hang in uncertainty for a couple seconds, Edward says slowly, "I guess that would be alright. Is that at the gift shop too?"

The boy nodded, the relief on his face making him look his age for the first time since Edward had encountered him, and Edward cheerfully got out his wallet as he looked back at the mother and asked, "Is that alright with you then? I'd be most appreciative."

The woman didn't have time to reply before her younger son started screaming, his sister, who had just stopped her own screaming, having whacked him with a sippy cup. Moving to inspect the screamer for blood while the nanny confiscated the sippy cup, causing the sister to start screaming again too, the mother said in a voice just loud enough to carry over her offspring, "Fine with me, if that's what Bryce wants."

Back to the boy, and resisting the urge to cover his ears, Edward asks good-naturedly, "Bryce, do we have a deal?"

"Let me see the money."

Edward extended the fifty-dollar bill he'd pulled out of his wallet, careful not to give Bryce a peek at the substantial number of other, larger bills that were in there. Bryce reached his hand up towards the bill, but Edward pulled it away a little, saying, "You're sure you want to trade?"

Lured in by the stern countenance of Ulysses S. Grant, Bryce burst out "Yes," and proved it by holding the leopard up by the tail towards Edward. Gingerly taking the animal by its body instead, Edward lowered the fifty and felt it snatched out of his hand by a happy Bryce.

"I'll get you the gorilla tomorrow," Edward promised as he held open one of the closing elevator doors long enough to step off the elevator. "Thank you, Bryce."

Bryce responded with, "The big one!" but didn't bother looking up from his cash, nor did his mother turn back around from her still-screaming toddlers. Not that Edward noticed, as he was now intent on scouting out apartment 6A while the elevator doors closed shut behind him.

It wasn't hard to find, there being only two apartments on each floor, with the entry doors facing each other along a hallway ending with a sizable window looking out onto Central Park.

Edward examined the gold numbers on each door, and started with the one on the left: 6A.

Not really expecting any success, he strode over and started knocking firmly on the door. "Isabella? Isabella Swan?" he called in a loud, deep voice meant to carry.

He knocked some more, then added, "It's Edward Cullen, sweetheart. Would you let me in please?"

He had just started in on another round of almost-pounding knocking when the door behind him swung open and he heard an old, crotchety voice saying, "For Goodness' sake, what is going on out here?"

Edward dropped his hand and turned on his heels, plastering as innocent and friendly a look on his face as he could muster at the sight before him: an ancient-appearing woman with a slightly-tattered silk shawl held tight around her shoulders by one claw-like hand while the other gripped a metal-tipped—and very deadly-looking—cane.

The eyes that looked him over were a faded but still clear and remarkably sharp blue, and as the formidable old hag (as Edward was thinking of her) tottered closer, her balance as much hurt by the old-fashioned high-heels she was wearing as it was helped by the cane she leaned on, he felt those eyes rake over him. The calculations he watched unfold as the eyes moved were not generous, but he hoped they might be fair.

He tested it. "Good evening. I am Edward Cullen. I apologize for disturbing you."

She met his politeness with her own. Drawing herself up, the formidable lady (Edward was wisely altering his inner vocabulary, being sensitive to the skills of fellow mind readers) said, "Good evening, Mr. Cullen. I am Mrs. Cope, Isabella's neighbor, and if she is not responding to such vociferous attempts at alerting her to your presence, I can only surmise she is either not at home or not desiring of your company."

Edward grinned at this, to which Mrs. Cope merely raised her brows in challenge, leaning in towards her intended victim with a great deal of relish, for the arthritis that was the bane of her elderly existence kept her far too often from the much-loved joy of intimidating others. "Do you find it amusing to disturb ladies from their evening repose, young man?"

Edward removed the grin from his face, moving it to his eyes, and shook his head in acceptance of her censure. "Not at all, Mrs. Cope. I am very sorry indeed for disturbing you."

Mrs. Cope accepted the appropriately-chastened young man's elegant apology, twinkling eyes graciously overlooked, with a slight nod, indicating it was merely what she was due. But the very slight upturn of her own lips and the kindling of some new warmth in her own eyes gave away the fact that such a response was not what she usually received from today's rude youth.

Isabella being a much-appreciated exception.

And thinking of Isabella in this appreciative light, Mrs. Cope resumes her worthy protective sally against the interloper in the hallway, suggesting, "If you telephone Miss Swan and request the honor of a daytime appointment, I am sure she will oblige you if you have any merit at all. She is a very discriminating and well-mannered young lady, not at all like her roommate," (Mrs. Cope couldn't help adding that part in, just as Edward couldn't help thinking "Meow"), "and must be treated accordingly."

There was no smile on the dowager's face now, though there was a great deal of enjoyment in her heart as she managed, from her much-shrunken height, to stare down the long-legged and well-dressed, not to mention very handsome, young man before her.

Mrs. Cope had been a gorgeous young belle and a beautiful—and powerful—middle-aged socialite, but she refused to grieve the loss of her attractiveness and social power, instead redirecting any frustrations with the brutality of aging and physical decay into derision for and censure of the very sorts of people she used to be, and to date, and to marry. Which may have been why she was free to feel so fond of Isabella (like Edward, Mrs. Cope much preferred Bella's full name); there was nothing in her that Mrs. Cope could relate to and therefore feel threatened by.

Meanwhile, Edward was wisely allowing the precariously-balanced but still-impressive-in-her-aggressive-display protector the satisfaction of seeing him cringe, just a little bit. He manufactured this reaction for his current opponent's benefit, giving her his regard as a fellow warrior wise enough to realize those smart and tough enough to be all-victorious will eventually survive long enough to be impossibly past their prime, but also for his own, hoping placating the tough old bird (his mental filter was off again) would win her over into collusion with his plans for cornering Isabella.

Feeling he had flattered Mrs. Cope as much as was necessary or tolerable, Edward resumed his full height and his authoritative voice, though with an unusual added layer of deferential respect, and said, "I'm afraid Isabella is unwell, Mrs. Cope, and I cannot delay seeing her. She is not responding to phone calls from myself or others who are close to her"—he prudently avoided mentioning Rosalie's name—"and we are worried about what condition she may be in. Might you be willing to help me by using your spare key to check on her?"

"Well, I don't know about helping _you,_ , as you are a complete stranger to me. But I am certainly glad to help Isabella. Perhaps she will answer the door for me." And hoping to show up the arrogant young man, the arrogant old woman marched up to the door of 6A and rapped, painfully.

"Yoo-hoo, Isabella, are you home? This is Shelley Cope, from across the hall. Would you let me in, dear?"

When there was no response after several seconds to her summons, or the two that followed either, Mrs. Cope had to choose between admitting defeat or signing on to the handsome Edward Cullen's theory that Isabella was sick or compromised seriously somehow. And being a woman allergic to defeat, it really wasn't much of a choice.

"Well, I suppose that opening the door so we can hear her if she's calling to us wouldn't be remiss," she offered, making that decision easily but finding it harder to contemplate tottering regally all the way back across the hall and to her own entryway to retrieve Isabella's spare key from her mahogany entryway table.

Edward guessed at her quandary, and made the gallant offer to retrieve the spare key for her, an offer graciously accepted because, of course, "You are closer to my door, it is true, and we shouldn't waste any time in checking on the girl. You'll find her key in my cloisonné bowl on the entryway tabletop; it has a ridiculous blue plastic hook on the chain but I haven't found the time to change it out for something more appropriate."

Actually, she had tried several times to get the key off the ring it had arrived on and onto something more tasteful, but had been foiled every time by her swollen arthritic fingers. She makes a mental note now to ask this young man with fingers presumably as strong as the rest of him to pry the key off when he returns it to her, and she smiles with pleasure at the thought of having that cheap blue plastic out of her entryway.

Edward is back quickly with said key, and indeed shows off both strong and nimble fingers as he opens Isabella's door in record time, swinging it open wide and sweeping his arm before him as he says, "After you," with a little bow towards Mrs. Cope.

She nods back at him, and enters regally, making a very slow bee-line for her favorite chair in Bella's living room: a stiff, upright wingback that she is certain she can get out of again without assistance.

Edward follows her after closing and locking the door behind them, but remains in the hallway as Mrs. Cope continues her stiff progress towards the living room. "Isabella, I'm here with Mrs. Cope. I'll be right there, sweetheart," he calls out towards the bedrooms.

To Mrs. Cope he says, "Would you mind sitting in the hallway by the door? I'm afraid I might startle her, and we don't want her running out of here under the false impression that her home's under attack."

Mrs. Cope pauses in her arduous journey and considers this, then nods her head, for once speechless as she surveys the entry area and hallway for an appropriate chair and, spying nothing, decides to spare her pride by attacking Edward's manners in not providing appropriate seating for a lady.

She turns as she inhales the breath to start a tirade, then lets it out in an uncharacteristic relieved sigh as she sees that energetic Mr. Cullen hauling her favorite chair from the living room to a spot in front of the door. He even returns for the side table, smiling as he places it in the hallway next to the chair and saying, "I have no idea how long this will take. Our Isabella seems capable of putting up a lengthy fight against her own best interests."

Mrs. Cope couldn't disagree, and for once didn't even want to since her comfort in whatever meantime was absolutely assured by what she has now decided is a satisfyingly well-mannered young man. Maybe even someone worthy of her favorite, Isabella. Maybe.

Edward correctly interprets her lack of commentary as satisfaction with the arrangements, and, after helping her into the chair in as gentlemanly a way as possible, starts down the hallway towards the bedrooms. "Isabella?" he calls out again, looking back once at the regal Mrs. Cope reigning over the entryway and throwing her a wink and a smile before disappearing around a corner.

"Isabella?" he repeats with knocking on the first of two open doors. There's no response, so he walks into the room slowly, assessing the situation as he moves.

He doesn't like what he sees. The bedcovers are in disarray, pillows are on the floor and there is a pair of shoes lying oddly as if they'd been kicked about or thrown—altogether the impression is one of struggle, and Edward feels an old panic start to grip him.

His next "Isabella," spoken as he quickly opens then closes the door to an attached bathroom—dark and empty—is urgent, and when there's no response he turns and speed-walks, almost runs, to the next open door in the hallway.

He dispenses with the knocking this time, simply calling, "Isabella!", his voice now gruff and almost angry-sounding with concern as he moves full-speed into a much larger and more elegant bedroom. This space shows no sign of struggle, but does have an open closet door. And as he recalls his earlier conversation with Rosalie, Edward starts to feel the panic ease.

Shaking his head, Edward walks quickly—for he won't really be at ease until he has visual confirmation of Isabella's safe presence in the apartment—to the open closet, feeling inside the closet door for a light switch. Finding one, he turns it on and sees an extensive walk-in filled with hanging clothes along all three sides with shoes neatly lined up along the bottom, though there's a gap at the back where long dresses have been shoved to one side and a couple of particularly-high heels are tipped over.

Heading to this spot, Edward pushes the clothes back a little further and peers behind them. Seeing nothing, he glances down…and finds Isabella curled up on the floor, fitted neatly into the corner with her head resting on what appears to be a winter coat, fast asleep.

Letting out the last of his fear in a large exhale, Edward laughs softly and crouches down next to her, staring at her peaceful body, her chest rising and falling in easy rhythm. Edward sees a lock of hair that's fallen into her face and reaches out a gentle hand to tuck it back behind her ear. As his fingers are ghosting along the edge of her cheek, he freezes when she stirs, tilting her face towards his hand as she murmurs, "Edward."

Snatching his hand back, Edward still stares at her, a little panic returning though for a different reason.

But the girl sleeps on, not opening her eyes to accuse him of anything but merely shifting her body and moving her hands farther under her head before saying, "Mmmm, Edward, don't go!"

Edward is all too happy to obey the sleeping edict of the girl, and stays perched on his heels a while longer, just watching her sleep. When the minutes pass and no more sleep-talking is heard, he finally decides to move lest he scare her when she wakes up and finds him staring down at her.

But first he stands and pulls a long wool coat off a nearby hanger, then leans in to Isabella's hiding place and carefully covers her with it. She smiles in her sleep and hums her warm satisfaction, one hand pulling the coat tightly underneath her chin as she tucks herself in.

Edward grins while watching her settle underneath the warmth he provided, then stands and moves to the closet entry, sitting down cross-legged in the middle of the open doorway. Shifting to lean against the door frame, he pulls out his phone and starts catching up on work emails, looking up every now and then to check for any sign of an awaking Isabella.

Ten minutes pass this way, then another five, until finally the silence is broken by the subdued ringtone of Edward's cell. Answering it quickly, Edward silently chides himself for not thinking to turn the ringer off.

"Hello?" he says softly, not needing to ask who it is this time as the Caller ID is quite clear.

"Don't 'Hello' me, Edward Cullen—what have you done with her?" Rosalie spits back.

"Rose, keep it down, all right? She's sleeping."

"Sleeping?" Rosalie shrills. "What is she doing sleeping with you?"

"She's not sleeping with me. She's just sleeping; in the closet, just like you said."

"And you couldn't call to tell me this?"

"I didn't want to disturb her." And more to the point, Edward had not spared a single thought for Rosalie since obtaining entry to the building.

Rosalie guessed this, pointing out the obvious: "You could have texted. Are you in the closet too?"

"I am."

"Hmph." Rosalie was excruciatingly torn between relief and concern that Edward Cullen seemed such a natural with Isabella. She was in the middle of additional due diligence on the topic of his overall trustworthiness and appropriateness as a suitor for her best friend and better half, but hadn't yet heard back from the step-brother she intended to grill and harangue and all-out bully until she got more satisfying answers to her concerns.

So Rosalie was playing for time, on her way home herself not that she was about to admit that to Edward Cullen, whom she half-hoped she would catch red-handed in some nefarious activity to simplify the decision-making. But only half.

Meanwhile, Edward was entirely engaged in the fascinating observation and pursuit of the increasingly attractive and satisfyingly surprising Miss Isabella Swan, not being one to get caught up on ethical vagaries or fine misgivings when his instincts are a go. He knows Rosalie poses the biggest potential barrier to him so far, and proceeds with his automatic plan to curry favor and gather intelligence from her until he has positioned himself so as to be able to cut her out. He doesn't mean anything nasty by it; it's just the way a savvy businessman proceeds.

"So are there any other Isabella hiding places I should know about before I get in any deeper?" he asks, half in co-conspirator joking, half in earnest.

Rosalie draws a big breath, decides to risk a little more trust. And to take another opportunity for testing. "Well…she does like bathtubs too."

"Bathtubs." There's no dullness or incredulity in his tone now; it's all humor and pleasure at the building evidence of Isabella's differentness from every other woman he's known. And definitely different from every woman he's _known._

"Bathtubs," Rosalie confirms, her voice tired. She's giving up too much information, but there's something so inevitable-seeming about all of this she can't seem to help herself, so continues, " With pillows, no water."

"Got it." Edward's happy matter-of-factness continues, hiding in bathtubs being no more bizarre than hiding in closets, and, with his recent visual of Isabella curled up in the corner helping him imagine the scenario, probably just as cute. Maybe cuter.

As he speaks, Edward sees the hanging clothes in Isabella's corner—which he's been staring at during the whole conversation—swing a little, and hears the unmistakable sounds of coats shifting as Isabella sits up.

"Rose, I've got to go. She's waking up."

"Have her call me!"

"Will do." Though he feels no weight whatsoever at this thoughtless promise, and Rose knows it.

Edward disconnects the call without looking down just as a bewildered Bella sticks her head out from behind the dresses at the back, then quickly pulls it back in and sits down in a heap, collapsing in the shock of Edward Cullen's presence in her closet. Staring at her.

Well, Rose's closet really, but Bella can't help but think of it as hers too. It's such a nice, safe closet…or at least it used to be, before … Edward Cullen … was sitting in it. And staring at her.

At least he was smiling…or is he laughing at her? Her insides clench at that horrible thought.

Making the next thing she thinks be, of course, _What am I going to do?_

**Stay tuned for the answer to that question and many more, though probably not the crucial question: Why is CL [me] such a stubborn freak (I say this with love knowing it's a culturally-sanctioned fact though not an everyday-helpful way to look at oneself I will admit) that she spends whatever free time she "has" or can illicitly manufacture writing this? No, we just have to take that condition as given, sort of like the Higgs boson before those fancy-pants at CERN proved its existence, or plain old gravity for those of us earth-bound and without expensive research facilities. **

**Besides, it's a much, much less satisfying question than: what are all the ways that a confident yet kind, powerful, dominant, desiring-of-submissive-Bella Edward can make overwhelmed yet loving, insecure, self-hating submissive Bella feel safe and loved and ****_wanted_****? Yes, that's the question worth asking indeed. More answers to it coming up next week! Or next month, or next year…depends on the #$% dishes.**

**Mush, (that's Mwah misspelled and modified into something more codependent), liza**


	4. Chapter 4

**Let's talk about lifeboats. The kind you can use to escape the shipwreck of hope and easy relational identity against the shoals of loss, shame and loneliness. In the storms of emotional despair and desperation.**

**Or even better, let's talk about jumping in to the raging sea of chaotic entropy and becoming dolphins. They're kick-ass ****_and _****cute, dolphins—just like us, wink-wink.**

**OK, so why become dolphins rather than go shopping for a better brand of life-preserver, or cast around desperately for a more seaworthy ship to take pity on us and throw out a tow line?**

**Well, mostly because some of us (e.g., me) have exhausted our cultural currency for life-preserver shopping (aka are old and powerless and un-sexually-appealing and tired) and are out of potential rescuers, leaving us with the grim realization that it's either develop better swimming skills or drown.**

**But there are other creatures well-adapted to stormy ocean living…sharks, turtles, sailfish, tuna. So why dolphins?**

**Because dolphins are a metaphor for adapting what is beautiful about us (empathy, relational intelligence, outward/other-orientation in action) and making them strengths instead of the shame-producing liabilities they are in human form and in human society, especially in mainstream white-American culture that expects people to go through life doing what they want instead of what other people seem to want or need.**

**And because transforming to an animal form rather than struggling unsuccessfully to be a different human acknowledges that we are who we are and suffer as we do in large part because we're made that way. Yes, we have choices about how we express our inner nature, but I'm getting at the difference between ****_being_**** child-like and acting like a child; between skillfully and painfully suppressing or delaying empathic and relational emotional experience and not being burdened with those emotions to begin with.**

**But most of all, projecting ourselves into the beauty, grace and power of a happy, healthy dolphin is excellent encouragement to let go of the misery-producing aspects of our human identity. To reinvent ourselves not by pretending to be something we're not, but by reimagining our situation and rethinking our base assumptions. To re-tell our story in ways more supportive of our strengths, more fair to our weaknesses, and much much more illuminating for the greater good.**

**Oh, in our daily lives there will still be plenty of moments when we feel every inch a desperate, drowning human. After all, any human with a conscience and some imagination and intelligence is stuck suffering one way or another as we plow through life and each others' universes, trying to make the best of the inevitable small collisions and minimize or avoid entirely the big ones.**

**But the shared world, the culture-at-large, stubbornly holds on to the fairy tale—the dark, destructive myth-that we are all playing by the same rules, let alone on the same field…let even farther alone in the same existential dimension.**

**We know we're not, but in order to survive the onslaught of those desperate not to be alone in their own realities and therefore begrudging –violently—you your universe and me mine, we have to do more than "know" this. When we're pronounced "losers" once again in the culturally-constructed game of life, we have to be as certain of its irrelevance to our worth and purpose as much of the rest of the world is certain we're crazy. Or deficient. Or both.**

**No, we have to be more certain than that even, because we are swimming over spiritual bedrock while the cultural victors are most likely sailing away drinking spiritual poison with the grim reaper sitting in their boat, just waiting. **

**Which is why we must pity them, and help both them and us by abandoning the emotional shipwreck of human existence. Not by casting about desperately for a way to edge out our neighbors into one of the too-few lifeboats, but by giving up the struggle entirely and embracing our own buoyancy.**

**Sure, it's hard. But no harder (and, in the long-term, much easier) than coming to terms with the spiritual and interpersonal violence usually necessary to score a temporary seat on one of those precious lifeboats.**

**And besides, even those who look to be sailing—or rowing, or aimlessly floating—away in the sunset are most likely just delaying their eventual capsize into the shark-filled waters of mortality, despair and loss. It's the laws of physics, baby—they're heartless and unshakable and they're gonna get us all.**

**So let them win! Entropy can have our human bodies, our careers, our sex appeal. It can even have our social identities and—deep breathing, now—our human sense of self. Because as spiritual dolphins, we get to keep some better things: the knowledge of our rightness swimming in the chaos sea; the ability to scare off destruction via shark attack by calling to the dolphin in others and surrounding the vulnerability in ourselves and those around us with strength and perseverance and compassion-in-action; and, most of all, the joy, beauty and agape-love we experience doing what we do as we do it. It fills us up, that joyful, beautiful, not-remotely-easy dolphin love, and eventually—I promise, and I'm betting my own life I'm right—we won't even miss the human needs, fears and passions that used to consume us.**

**In the meantime….here's an alternate reality—not just a lifeboat, but a life-luxury-yacht—to slip that hurting human psyche into while you recover from the struggles of the day. I think of my fantasy life as salve for the emotional wounds I am trying to learn how to avoid collecting in the first place. I'm not ashamed I need the first-aid of writing this story, but I do hope to need it less and less as my life swims on to whatever end awaits me.**

**Besides, it brings me joy, and I hope it brings you something good too. Hey, we're not earthworms or crabs anymore, we're dolphins! (Some days, anyway.) How's that for evolution? **

**Come swim with me.**

**Much love and peace to you,**

**liza**

**p.s. I'm so slo-o-o-ow these days because post-concussion syndrome has been knocking me flat. Bear with me—I'll always come back as long as I'm still swimming. I'm a very stubborn dolphin, just like you.**

**XxXxXx **

I accidentally banged my head against the wall of the closet as I sat back down behind Rosalie's formal gowns. In total shock. I swore I had just seen Edward Cullen – Edward Cullen!—sitting in the closet doorway. What could he possibly be _doing_ there?

I felt my eyes stretch wide as I remembered our supposed dinner date while my right hand absent-mindedly came up to rub the back of my head where I'd just knocked it. I hadn't had any more time to think anything through when I heard the dresses rustling from in front of me and an unbelievably-familiar voice asking me, "Isabella? Are you all right? I heard a disturbing 'thunk' back there."

As he was saying this, Edward Cullen—Edward Cullen!—was sticking his head and shoulders back in my hiding space, peering around for me. It didn't take long for him to pin me with his gaze; I was huddled in the corner with no place to run to and no way to disappear. I stared up at him, speechless, my hand still on the previously-sore spot on my head, though I wasn't feeling anything at that point other than absolute disbelief at the situation. And complete uncertainty about what to do, say or even think next.

Edward solved that the way he always seems to solve everything: by making my problem his. And it was just as insanely wonderful, and scary, as it had been since the first minute I sort-of met him. So he reached out one of his large, capable hands and took over rubbing the sore spot for me while my own hand fell into my lap with a loss of muscle tone confirmed by my mouth dropping wide open.

Meanwhile Edward's own mouth quirked up into a grin and his eyes twinkled—they really did! Edward Cullen has twinkling eyes!

And very soothing, capable fingers. He didn't say anything else, but gently rubbed the sore spot while he squatted on his heels and leaned into me and I just sat there, gawping up at him like the spineless pool of goo he turns me into. I'm always spineless, of course, but not usually nearly so gooey. It's embarrassing.

But I wasn't embarrassed then, just mesmerized, as Edward stopped rubbing my head and brought his hand around instead to cup the side of my cheek, running his thumb back and forth across my jaw a few times as he asked, so quietly I had to concentrate to hear him over the sound of my pounding heart, "Are you feeling better, sweetheart?"

I don't know why, (well, really I do but I'm not going to admit it yet), but those words—especially the last one—made me start crying. Instant tears. And not subtle eye moisture, but big fat rollers down my cheeks building quickly to sobs. I was so ashamed!

Which of course only made me cry harder, but Edward didn't seem to mind at all. He just sat down next to me and wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into the side of his chest while his other hand went back up to the side of my head, not rubbing this time but just holding me against him.

I had dreamed of this, asleep and awake, nearly non-stop in the almost 24-hours since walking into the kitchen and finding the most handsome man I'd ever seen sitting there, staring at me with inexplicable interest. I had dreamed it, but I had not at all believed it.

I still didn't believe it, but as Edward continued to sit there, motionless except for the reassuring in-and-out of his chest with his breathing and the gentle movement of his thumb against my cheek and scalp, I did stop crying. I stopped crying, and stopped thinking and just melted into him and his comfortingly strong body, his powerful arm wrapped around me making me feel safer than I've ever felt before.

I have no idea how many minutes we sat there. It felt like hours, maybe eons, but couldn't really have been very long before my stomach made a very embarrassingly loud growling noise. My face burned and I ducked my head even tighter into Edward's side, but he just laughed and said, "Time to feed the Bella!" as he lifted me up to standing along with him.

He apparently forgot we were in a closet however, because he straightened right into the shelves on top and this time _I_ heard a disturbing "thunk" and had to ask _him_ if he was okay.

"Edward, are you all right?" I asked earnestly.

There was a pause, and Edward stood stock still. I started to think something was wrong, and my mind raced off in a thousand directions considering what that wrong thing might be before he replied, his voice somehow both soft and scratchy like, I don't know, velvet sandpaper, "Isabella, you said my name!"

Well, that confirmed one of my many suspicions of what I had done wrong and I instantly rushed to apologize for my forwardness. "I'm so sor-" was all I got out though and I hadn't even had time to blush once more before he—before _Edward_ –said, "That makes me so happy!"

That was unexpected. I didn't have a line of thought for that statement, and so my thought stopped again. I remember staring blankly up at him smiling down at me, but that is all I remember for some time after.

And I have no idea whatsoever how we got out of the closet.

XxXxXx

If I had harbored any doubts as to the desirability of Isabella Swan for me, which I suppose I must have, they were all destroyed the moment I wrapped my arm around the quaking girl in the back of Rosalie Hale's closet. She simply melted into me, fitting into place like the proverbial key in a lock—a very old, rusty lock that I had long ago given up any idea of opening. It was somehow both a very familiar and a very surprising feeling.

I loved it.

High on adrenaline and joy, I soaked up every millisecond of Isabella's body against mine, her unbelievable, incomprehensible and very unwise instant trust in me like the most potent form of illicit drug any backroom dealer could dream of selling. And it was mine, free for the taking.

So I took it; took her. And took some more. I have no idea how long I would have kept her there, pressed against me, if her body hadn't registered its complaint of my treatment, her small but insistent stomach grumbling as the minutes past a healthy dinner time pressed on.

I should have been chastened by the awareness of my immediate failure in caring well for the girl in my arms, but instead I just laughed at the adorableness of Isabella's body and mind. For her reaction to her hunger wasn't irritation with me at failing to provide for her comfort, but embarrassment at her own honest needs.

I'm afraid that her embarrassment far too easily heads heavily into shame; I will be helping her with that as soon as possible. Someone as exquisite, as open, as gentle as Isabella has no business dealing with shame. Fortunately, my experience both in business and as a well-practiced Dominant gives me much skill in manipulating emotion, and I plan to put all of it to use in curing Isabella of any sentiments that don't further her well-being.

Not that I expect her to appreciate this, because she won't. At least, she won't allow herself to _admit _she appreciates it for quite some time. It wouldn't be safe, and certainly wouldn't be prudent…at least from her point of view.

Which is one of the most interesting, compelling aspects of Isabella: despite all her willingness to throw herself into relationships without seeming reserve, to trust others' best instincts without proof of such instincts' existence or any degree of common-sense self-protectiveness whatsoever, she is completely guarded in the aspect of believing other people like her; admire her; _love_ her.

No, she holds fast with both hands and all her stubborn heart to the frustrating, inaccurate and downright dangerous belief that she is unlovable, despite her greatest hope and fondest desire being to be loved by someone who can keep her safe.

Fortunately again for both of us, I am the rare individual who can hope to do both, even for someone as naïve-ly difficult and absurdly challenging as Isabella Swan. As long as my own base nature doesn't screw it up.

If she didn't need someone like me so badly, it would be wrong to even try. As it is, it's probably still wrong for me to involve myself with her, but I find myself not caring-or rather caring far too much.

Besides, right at that moment, all I needed to do was get an undersized woman-child fed. How hard could that be?

XxXxXx

Grinning at the girl he has hold of by the elbows, a content if slightly sore-headed Edward Cullen finally says, "Well, sweetheart, I suppose we better go find dinner," then leans down and kisses a still-silent, wide-eyed Bella on the forehead before striding out of the closet, towing her behind.

He is just across the closet's threshold when he realizes he needs to slow down, and pauses in the doorway to turn round and laugh. "Those legs of yours are awfully short, sweetheart—why don't I speed things up a bit?"

Then he leans in and scoops her up, holding her against his chest as he resumes his quick-step out of the room, turning the lights off with his elbow as he leaves.

At first rigid in his arms, Bella quickly succumbs to the rhythm of his step and the cheerfulness of his demeanor—Edward's humming the melody line to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"—and relaxes into his chest, resting the side of her head right above his heart. Which makes Edward even happier.

He bursts out from around the corner and into the final hallway, spotting Mrs. Cope in front of the door with her own head tucked down as she takes a quick nap, and he slows, having actually forgotten all about the other human being in the apartment.

His euphoria stalls out for just a moment, replaced by irritation and a surprising desire to growl at the poor old lady, a desire he transforms into just the slightest vibration of his voice but which is enough for Bella to rouse from her altered state of consciousness, stick her head up and look around her.

When she spots Mrs. Cope sitting at the door, still asleep, she says a surprised "Oh!" and starts to wriggle to get down out of Edward's arms.

Edward's arms tighten in response.

"What do you think you're doing, Isabella?" he growls for real this time.

She freezes, afraid and upset at the threatening tone of his voice. Her eyes flick shyly upwards and, for a fraction of a second, catch Edward's intense and wholly possessive stare down at her, making her squeak and turn her head into his shoulder, smooshing her face into his suit jacket in a rather ridiculous effort to hide.

Edward loves every ridiculous moment of it—of her. Laughing lightly, his instant outrage at her ineffective attempt to separate from him gone as quickly as it came in the face of her separation incompetence, he wraps his long fingers around the oh-so-vulnerable seeming back of her head and squeezes her even more tightly into him, just for a second, then leans down to kiss her lingeringly on the shell of her ear, nuzzling her hair a little for good measure too.

"Is she alright then?" Mrs. Cope's sharp voice cuts into their moment, making Bella jump in Edward's arms and making Edward now instantly irate, though with great effort he schools his face into something pleasant or at least neutral as he looks back up at the newly-alert old woman sitting regally in her chair in the middle of the hallway.

Bella just lays limply in Edward's arms, no fight at all to get down, a compliant and entirely submissive fact that restores Edward's good humor and then some. So he is soon able to genuinely smile at his ally whose usefulness tonight is over, and to remember his social and moral obligations to Mrs. Cope, setting Isabella ever so gently down on her feet and choosing to view this interruption in his eventual caveman-like claiming of her as simply more time to savor the unfolding of the inevitable.

"Yes, she's alright Mrs. Cope; or she will be. Just exhausted from overextending herself, I suspect."

Bella, on the other hand, feels the old pull of shame the moment her feet touch the floor, her inner hope crumbling as her shoulders cave and one hand comes up to cover her face as the angry, frustrated, embarrassed tears start to fill her eyes.

The usual emotional routine is interrupted, however, when Edward lays one hand heavily on her shoulder, squeezes more than gently, and leans down to speak softly in her ear, "If you can't handle this, I'll take you down to my car right now."

It's a threat; it's a promise; and it's exactly what Bella needs to lift her head, dry up her tears and pretend competence again, moving away from Edward—which he slowly allows—as she looks up to Mrs. Cope and says, "Mrs. Cope, how nice to see you!"

"And you too, my dear!" Mrs. Cope answers with officious pleasure. "I found this young man banging on your door with more enthusiasm than manners. Is he acceptable to you as a visitor, or shall I see him out?"

The satisfaction with which the elderly lady uttered the latter part of her question belied her seeming frailty, and the look she leveled at Edward as she said it left no doubt that she would gladly see to his exit if given half an opportunity.

Edward stares calmly back at the threatening dowager with a half-smile playing on his lips before turning to grin at Bella as she demurely stutters about trying to protect him from Mrs. Cope's interventions. "Oh, he's just fine, Mrs. Cope. I mean, I am glad to have him here. I mean, of course I don't mind him visiting."

Thoroughly flustered and embarrassed, her face growing redder with every word she speaks, Bella finally ends with a somewhat desperate-sounding polite inquiry, "May I get you something to drink?"

Though the question is oriented in the general direction of Mrs. Cope—Bella is unable at this point to look anyone in the eye so technically she is inquiring towards the wall—it is Edward who answers. "Drinks all round are in order, Isabella. Shall we retire to the kitchen and plan our dinner as well? I think we'll stay in tonight and let the meal come to us."

As he is speaking, Edward is closing the small distance he'd allowed to develop between himself and Isabella, holding out his crooked arm towards her as he does so. Staring at him with a vulnerable look of simultaneous fear and hope, Isabella is frozen in place. Laughing lightly, Edward reaches out and maneuvers her arm through his, then throws "We'll be right back with that drink, Mrs. Cope," over his shoulder as he pulls Bella into the kitchen.

He tows her as far as the kitchen table, where he stops and hoists Bella up at the waist, setting her down on the table top, her legs dangling over the side. Leaning in, his hands planted on either side of her thighs, Edward stares her straight in the eye and says, "Stay put, little girl. Understand?"

Her face on fire once more, Bella averts her gaze to the floor and nods, biting her lip as she tries not to cry. She can't think straight and she feels horribly exposed sitting on the table, but she closes her eyes and swings her legs and tries to stay put as best she can.

She makes it five seconds, long enough for Edward to move to one of the cabinets and start opening doors, looking for glasses and liquor. As soon as his back is turned and she hears him engaged in examining the cupboards, Isabella jumps off the table and scurries over to the liquor cabinet across the kitchen from where Edward is standing. He turns back towards her as soon as he hears her feet hit the floor (not elegantly), and is watching her with a half-smile on his face and an almost-evil glint in his eyes.

Finally, savoring every delicious moment of peeling Isabella's façade of grown-up competency away from her, something he'll chastise himself for later that night but is whole-heartedly enjoying now, Edward asks, "Isabella, did I give you permission to get up?" in a dangerously calm voice.

Stricken, Bella stares back at him, her face white now, her eyes as wide as the decanter of whiskey she's holding. Slowly, oh so slowly, she shakes her head back and forth.

"That's what I thought," Edward says dryly, approaching her and taking the liquor out of her hands before setting it on the top of the chest behind her. Standing in front of Isabella, who's now trembling with fear and shame, Edward puts his hands on his hips and leans down towards her, speaking softly. "Go stand in the corner, Isabella."

One hand heavy on her waist, he half-pushes, half-guides a foot-dragging Isabella into the nearest corner of the kitchen, turning her to face in and nudging her forward until her feet hit the wainscoting and her nose almost touches the wall. "Stand here until I come back for you, baby girl."

Not daring to move her body, Bella lifts her head and twists it towards him, protesting, "But I can help you with the drinks, and with dinner!"

"Not unless I say so, baby girl; not unless I say so."

Bella starts to get mad; outraged, really. She stomps her foot and comes out with a line she later won't believe she said. "You're not the boss of me!"

But Edward just laughs, loving the sweetly naïve innocence of her protest, and answers, "I wouldn't be so sure of that, princess. Why don't you try disobeying me and find out?" After issuing that challenge, he pauses on his way back to the glasses cabinet with whiskey in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, staring poor Bella down with raised eyebrows and dangerous eyes.

Bella stares back for a heartbeat or two, but quickly loses both her outrage and her courage, her head dropping and her shoulders caving once more in shame. Edward sees and understands this transition, so sets the liquor bottles down on the granite countertop before moving quickly back to her and pulling her into him, her back to his front.

When his arms come around her, Bella loses what little bit of self-control she had remaining and starts to sob, while Edward shushes her and says, "I've got you, sweetheart; it's alright; I've got you."

He is on the third or fourth repetition of this line when he hears female voices in the front entryway, and draws Isabella even tighter into his chest to prepare for the invasion of the irate Rosalie he'd been expecting any moment.

He is not disappointed: as soon as Rosalie enters the kitchen, she is _pissed_.

"You've made her cry, Edward? Really? This is your idea of 'making sure she's safe and happy'? I hate to tell you this, but crying isn't what Bella does when she's happy."

As she is launching into Edward with as much anxiety as anger, Rose is approaching where he stands with Bella in his arms, Bella still hiding against Edward's chest. When she registers Rose's presence, however, she raises her head and blushes, trying to pull away from Edward.

He doesn't let her.

She struggles in his hold and whispers, "Edward, please, let me go."

To which he responds simply, "No."

Then lifting his eyes to Rose, Edward retorts, "I've made good use of all your intelligence, Rosalie, and what you see is just the emotional consequence of me making Isabella feel safer than she has in a very long time. The happy part will come later. Isn't that right, sweetheart?" and playing dirty, he looks back down to Bella's upturned head, putting all the heart-melting warmth he can into his eyes and lips as he quirks a smile at her.

Bella, of course, has no choice but to nod in agreement with him, her never-strong executive control completely undercut by the sheer power of Edward Cullen's will.

Rosalie is not fooled, but doesn't see the benefit in pointing that out. Instead, she moves into alpha-female hostess mode, knowing that acting like she's in control of the situation is her best hope of actually becoming so.

"I'm starved," Rosalie says in a matter-of-fact tone like she'd use in any normal social interaction. "Are you hungry, Bella? Why don't we order from the deli down the street. Edward, would you like anything?"

As she was speaking, Rose was moving towards the kitchen drawer where they keep their take-out menus, not looking Edward's or Bella's direction. As she pulls the drawer open, she hears Edward's amused reply, for he knows exactly what she's trying to do and has no intention of letting her do it.

"A deli is as good as anything, I suppose; go ahead and order a variety of what you ladies like, and I'll have my driver pay for it and bring it up. Oh, and don't forget Mrs. Cope in the hallway, please."

Rose rolls her eyes and starts in with a voice dripping with acid, "As if I could forget…" but trails off as speaking simultaneously is Mrs. Cope herself, moving painfully and slowly into the kitchen but with as much dignity as she can muster—which is more than most people see in all their lifetimes- "Don't forget me what?"

Edward and Rose both turn to look at Mrs. Cope while Bella shrinks further into Edward's chest, ardently hoping she really will disappear into the floor this time. She even brings one arm up to wrap around her head, but Edward catches it on the way up and drags her back towards the kitchen table with it, Bella tripping along behind.

"Why Mrs. Cope, you found us," Edward says warmly, winking at the lady now half-way between the doorway to the hall and the table. Stopping briefly to pull out a chair for Bella and push her by the shoulders down into it before sliding it back under the table, Bella in it now, Edward moves to the nearest chair to the doorway and pulls it out with a flourish, waiting without a comment the drawn-out time it takes for Mrs. Cope to close the distance and painfully sit in the offered chair, Edward's gallant hand supporting her at the elbow to ease the descent.

Meanwhile, Rosalie has been on the phone with the deli, ordering wildly off the menu, her mind not really on the job but on a rapid evaluation of the pros and cons of the situation concerning Edward Cullen and her best friend. Her answer keeps coming up in the negative as far as it concerns Rosalie, and undetermined as it affects Bella, so her mood is none improved as she hangs up the phone after a final admonition/plea to "Hurry it up, please!"

Turning back around to the table, she sees Edward setting a glass of sherry down in front of Mrs. Cope, and then watches as he moves gracefully to the Sub Zero for a can of ginger ale which he cracks and pours into a glass for Bella.

Rose sees her opening. "She likes ice," she announces frostily—aware of the irony—and grabs a new glass from the cabinet, fills it with ice, and marches over to Bella's place at the table where she pours the ginger ale into the new glass.

Edward, still standing on the other side of Bella nearest Mrs. Cope, merely grins at Rose's attempt to undercut him, saying with an arch glance at Rosalie, "Obviously."

Rose fumes at that but manages to appear to ignore him, pouring herself her own drink and sitting down sideways next to Bella, determined to cut Edward out of any further interaction with her roommate for the rest of the meal.

Edward, confident and therefore unworried about Rose's maneuvering, moves away from the table and calls Taylor to issue instructions for the meal delivery, including the building's entry code.

Finished with that call, he turns to Mrs. Cope with, "May I ask the number for the front desk? Your doorman is deplorably lax in security, but there's no need to let him think we're not noticing."

Indeed, Edward already had decided to contact the building's property management firm and request a new, Cullen-approved front desk staff be brought on board, one less willing to allow strangers like himself into the building without permission from a resident. He had appreciated the easy entry when he needed it, but wasn't going to let that situation continue now that he had his in.

"I'm sure I don't know; I just dial zero on my telephone at home. Why you young people want telephones that don't know the residence they belong to is beyond my understanding," Mrs. Cope replies grumpily to cover her frustration at not being able to answer Edward's question.

Not speaking, Edward turns his questioning gaze to Rosalie, who rolls her eyes again and says, "Fine, I'll call down. What's the name of your gorilla?"

Edward narrows his eyes and retorts, "He's less gorilla and more lethal killing machine, not to mention Mensa-level strategist. But I can understand your jealousy at not having a person of such quality to cater to your every need so I'll overlook the insult. His name is Taylor; he's 6'3", has a blonde crew cut, and wears a dark suit. Enough information for you, or would you like to know his sign? But I guarantee you, he's not your type."

Smiling cherubically at a temporarily speechless Rosalie, Edward moves to pour his own drink, Rose having already gotten her own.

The conversation continues in awkward dialogue between Edward and Mrs. Cope with Rosalie jumping in as able with caustic comments right and left and Bella bearing silent, exquisitely embarrassed witness to it all.

Finally, and a relief to them all, they hear the buzzer and the front desk announcing over the intercom, "A Mr. Taylor is on his way up with your food."

Loath to leave Bella alone in the kitchen with Edward, Mrs. Cope not being a remotely suitable chaperone given how much she detests Rosalie paired with how her eyes go soft when she's talking to Edward (she may still sputter criticisms, but Shelly Cope is truly enamored of Edward Cullen, and enjoys quite a few reminiscent fantasies in the months to come of experiences from her earlier life with Edward Cullen subbed into the role of leading man), Rosalie hesitates.

Noticing this, Edward rises easily to go to the front door and let in his security detail, first leaning down to whisper in Bella's ear, "I'll be right back, sweetheart; stay put."

Isabella tears up in desire and embarrassment and self-flagellating shame, but does stay put—in part because she can't see to escape with all the moisture she's blinking back.

Mrs. Cope takes advantage of Edward's brief absence for a little womanly gossip; leaning in she says hoarsely, "I must say, Isabella, I think your young man is quite handsome. A little forward, perhaps, but that's a good quality to have in business. I'm sure you'll soon have his manners nicely polished. At least he knows enough to offer his hand to a lady; that's no insignificant quality these days."

And with a sage nod, Mrs. Cope leans back as Bella, ashen faced, looks up and over Mrs. Cope's shoulder to respond, "Oh, Mrs. Cope, Edward's not my young man. He's just; he's just; he's just a friend?" And as she finishes her sentence with a stab at an explanation of something she really isn't understanding herself, Bella turns to the side to look at Rose.

Rose is uncharacteristically silent, turning the situation over and over in her head and trying to think of some way to get Edward Cullen out of her home before he steals her best friend and roommate, but comes to a little when she sees Bella's panicked face. "That's right, Bella; he's just a friend," she answers.

Edward is entering the kitchen as Rose speaks, bags in hand; he can't resist and asks with faux innocence, "Who's just a friend?"

"You are," Rose replies curtly, though Edward merely chuckles and sets the bags down on the counter.

Then over his shoulder, he tosses out a light-hearted, "Keep telling yourself that, Rose," and quickly moves on to a description of the contents for Mrs. Cope, plating up what she likes and then making up a plate for Bella with no input from her whatsoever.

As he sets Bella's plate down in front of her, Rose shoves her chair back from the table and stalks over to the food, grabbing a plate and putting noisy spoonfuls of salad on it. Smoothly, Edward appears at her side, his own plate in hand, and says quietly, "Please, Rose, let's call a truce and enjoy our meal in peace."

Rose snorts at this, albeit quietly, so Edward continues, "I think our fighting is upsetting her."

A quick glance over her shoulder confirms this for Rose, so she begrudgingly says, "Fine. But don't forget she's _my_ roommate, and I'm the one who's been taking care of her for ten years."

That was a slight exaggeration, but Edward didn't challenge it, glad to get Rose's agreement on anything regarding Isabella as he knew it was tacit acknowledgment of his increasing-by-the-moment right to have something to say about anything concerning his girl.

After a surprisingly pleasant meal with lively discussion of the New York Upper East Side social scene, including a number of humorous reminiscences from Mrs. Cope, Edward is clearing the plates from the table and setting them in the sink when he notices a box of chocolate cupcakes with pretty frosting flowers that Bella had bought on her way home from work. Teasing her, he picks up the box and turns around saying, "Is somebody holding out on us with dessert?"

Bella of course blushes and stammers, finally getting out, "I'm sorry, I forgot I bought those. Would you like a cupcake, Mrs. Cope?"

"Well, I shouldn't have so much sugar, but…well, they do look pretty, don't they? I suppose one wouldn't hurt." Nor did it hurt any of them, sitting around the table with decaf coffee, herbal tea (at Edward's insistence for Bella), and far too much frosting, but a nice sugar buzz adding to their general sense of communal well-being and temporary family.

Finally, Mrs. Cope says she has to get home to bed. Bella immediately jumps up to walk her to the door, thanking her for her company, and Edward continues his gentlemanly attentions to the tired old lady by pulling out her chair from the table and giving much more assistance via her forearm and elbow to get her out of the chair than she had required to get in.

When she is standing, much more hunched and fragile-looking than she had been earlier in the evening, Edward offers to walk Mrs. Cope home. Indeed, he insists over her perfunctory protests, wrapping an arm around the lady's waist and supporting her under both arms to Mrs. Cope's great but silent gratitude.

Bella follows them patiently to the door, Rose hovering in the background.

When Bella has the front door open, and is planning to follow them to hold Mrs. Cope's door as well, Edward pauses in the doorway and looks down with paternal pride at Bella, telling her, "Get ready for bed, sweetheart, and I'll be back to tuck you in."

Bella is still holding the front door open, staring after him, dumbstruck by that bombshell, as Edward moves away from the apartment and towards Mrs. Cope's front door. A few seconds pass before he pauses again, turning back to look Bella in the eyes, raising his own eyebrows and saying, "Get moving, then, Isabella. I'll be back in a minute."

He starts off again with Mrs. Cope, but turns back once more to look at Bella over his shoulder as he moves, smiling at her and saying, "And I want you in your _bed_, not hiding in the bathtub, understood?"

He stares at her, still smiling but with something more serious in his unwavering gaze, until Bella slowly moves her head up and down. Then he grins, says "Good," and turns forward again, continuing the careful progress to Mrs. Cope's front door.

Meanwhile, Rosalie has come to from where she had been standing in the kitchen doorway, watching the whole exchange with narrowed eyes and uncertainty. Now she comes up and drags Bella back behind their own front door, closing it but reluctantly not locking it, and looking hard at Bella.

They just look at each other (Rose at Bella's face, Bella at Rose's feet) for a couple of weighty, or in Bella's case humiliated, moments before Rosalie asks, "So do you like him?"

Bella lifts her head slowly to look at Rose directly now instead of at the floor, though it's hard to tear her mind away from the moment she last saw…that man. "Um, what?" she finally responds.

Rosalie huffs, repeats, "Do you _like_ him?"

Bella is dazed. "Um, I don't know. Do you?"

Rosalie rolls her eyes, realizing as she does how many times she's done so that night. Exasperated and fighting panic, she puts her hand on her friend's shoulder, leans in and says intensely, "Listen, Bella, this is serious. If we're not careful, you're going to end up married to this man."

Then Rosalie, who had called Jasper earlier that night after the go-round with Edward and Bella-the-no-show-in-the-lobby and forced a few more details out of him (everything he knows), adds under her breath, "Or some other bizarre contractual arrangement, which would _really_ make me angry."

Bella hears and understands the first part, though not so much the second, and expresses her overall sentiments with a hugely incredulous snort.

Rosalie ignores her, other than to say, "I'm _serious_, Bella. That man is _into_ you. And normally, I'd say 'This is great! My best friend has one of the richest, not to mention best-looking, men on the planet wrapped around her finger! Bully for her! Bully for me!' But, Bella, that only applies if you like him. If you _want_ to be pursued by him. If you don't, then I need to kick him out now, before he gets any more at home here."

Then, a little frustrated by Bella's lack of response or any sign of higher-level consciousness, Rosalie shakes her shoulder a little and says, _"Do you understand?" _with what isn't quite but is getting close to a hysterical tone of voice.

Bella finally nods, and says slowly back, "I'm trying to, Rose," which makes Rose calm down and switch gears, pulling Bella in for a hug instead.

"I know, B; I know you are. We just; we don't have much time."

Edward has just quietly re-entered the apartment, and the click as he closes the door behind him makes Rose jump, then slowly turn toward Edward as he says, moving stealthily towards them like a stalking jungle cat, speaking to Rose but with his eyes resting heavily on Bella, "That's right, Rosalie; there's not much time at all if we're going to get this one to bed before it's past her bedtime. Am I right, Isabella?"

And stopping much closer than is remotely polite to Rosalie still standing with her arms around Isabella, making it really a little threatening, Edward stares Bella in the eyes until he gets another slow head nod, then turns and stares Rose into dropping her arms so that Edward can pick up one of Bella's hands again and tow her back down the hall.

Over his shoulder, he throws back to Rose, who's taking a turn standing mute and wide-eyed in the hallway, "I've got this. I'll check in with you before I go."

To which Rose can only respond with a head nod before Edward has Bella in her room, closing the door behind them with another click, this one echoing like a gunshot signaling the start of a war.

XxXxXx

**_Now go watch the movie "Barefoot" (available for Instant Streaming on Netflix right now) if you haven't seen it already. It's perfectly us! xoxo liza_**


	5. Chapter 5

**Ah, Bella, Bella, Bella…how difficult you get to be! And how people like me—stuck dealing with others' difficult-ness while having to relinquish ever more of our own—envy you.**

**Maybe in the end people like me are the lucky ones though, because most Edwards die. But it wouldn't stop me from picking a Bella life in an instant if I had the chance for a re-write do-over.**

**Except…maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I'd stick with this tired middle-aged life of loss and overwhelming responsibility. Maybe anything with less suffering would be too easy, and therefore not satisfying. **

**Maybe. **

**And that's a big accomplishment, right there. That "maybe" is the best development in my psyche since I figured out that the damage of almost any parenting failure can be counteracted by admitting, owning and apologizing for the mistake, thus teaching one of the most important life skills: forgiveness of self and others. And modeling both compassion (for ourselves) and empathy (for our children).**

**Here's to your big accomplishments, and to our shared pleasures. May they feed each other in an upward cycle of hope, love and positive change. To us!**

**xoxo liza**

**XxXxXx**

Once Isabella was safely in her room with his own body leaning against the only exit door, Edward was willing to let her pull away from his grasp. Dropping his hand that had been holding hers, he watched to see what she would do when left to her own devices.

He didn't watch long. Separated from Edward, Bella, most predictably, began to panic. Standing frozen in the middle of her room, wanting to run but having nowhere to really run to, she began to hyperventilate, too torn between crying and hiding to do either.

Finally, she decides to retreat to the bathroom which at least has a locked door and the shower to give her some semblance of privacy, for she is hyper-aware of the quiet strength of Edward Cullen still leaning against her bedroom door. Raising her trembling chin to try and at least appear like she is in control of herself and not about to fly into a thousand sobbing pieces, Bella starts walking towards the bathroom, but stumbles and leans in to the bed to keep from falling.

As she steadies herself, one of her hands brushes against the stuffed leopard Edward had tossed on the bed during his search for her earlier, and surprised at the feel of it, she stops and looks down. Picking it up, she smiles at the stuffed animal's sweet expression and the softness of its fur.

Holding it out in front of her she turns back towards Edward, the stress of the moment forgotten in the pleasure of the unexpected present. Smiling hesitantly, afraid she might be misinterpreting the unfamiliar object in her space, she asks shyly, "Is this for me?"

As soon as the question is out, Bella blushes, feeling she's overstepped and made assumptions and acted self-centeredly—of course Edward Cullen didn't bring her a stuffed animal! It must be something he bought for someone else in his life, a niece or nephew maybe, and he just left it there by accident and…

But Edward is grinning back at her, unspeakably pleased at how much she likes his spontaneous present and saying a silent word of thanks for the mercenary 5-year-old no doubt asleep on a floor above them at that very moment. Breaking into her inner monologue of shame, Edward answers simply, "Of course. Do you like it?"

Bella blushes anew, tucking her head down again and turning away from Edward, but nodding vigorously in reply. She runs her hand over the back of the stuffed animal several times as if it were alive and in need of comfort, though it is really her own self she is trying to soothe with the motion.

She has forgotten about retreating to the bathroom, and instead sinks into a well of emotion, a potent mixture of hope and fear and happiness and embarrassment and shame leaving her blinking back tears once more. Soon the blinking isn't enough, and the tears spill out and run down her cheeks, and soon after that she is sobbing—but by then she is sobbing in Edward's arms, for he had started moving towards her as soon as she turned away from him, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and turning her into him as soon as he hears—and feels—the sobbing begin.

"I'm—so—sorry!" Bella gasps out in between her crying, and Edward is quick to shush her.

"Shhhhhh…you have nothing to be sorry for."

"But—" Bella tries to object.

"No! Absolutely nothing," Edward cuts her off, then continues, "I have just enjoyed one of the happiest nights of my life, and I would appreciate it if you would let me end a perfect evening by helping you get ready for bed. You—and Mr. Snow Leopard here—would be doing me a great favor. And then I'll tuck you in and say goodnight, and you can go to sleep so that tomorrow can come and we can do it all over again. What do you say?" and as he asks this, he's leaning into her, one hand stroking the back of the leopard and her hand holding it, his lips brushing against her cheek and bestowing small kisses along her hair line.

Bella can't find her voice to say anything, and Edward brings his hand up from the leopard to rub his thumb along the contours of her face, savoring the emotionally fraught silence and her inability to say "No" to him as well as her inability to say "Yes."

Finally breaking the silence himself, Edward whispers, "You are exactly right the way you are, Isabella Swan; I think I have been waiting my whole life just for you." At which incomprehensible statement Isabella bursts out in even noisier sobs than before, her knees going weak and her body sagging into his, leading him to pick her up under her knees in a cradle hold before moving to the bathroom and shutting the door behind them.

As soon as he started moving, Bella had wrapped her arms around Edward's neck and tucked her head in against him, leaving Edward exultant at her newfound trust in him and Bella luxuriating in the smell of Edward's skin. Both of them are loathe to leave their positioning, so Edward stands a few moments on a throw rug in the white-tiled bathroom before forcing himself to proceed to the shower, lean down, and turn it on as hot as it will go.

As the steam starts to build, Edward toes off his shoes and then reaches around to remove Bella's before remembering they were off already. Smiling, he sets her down standing on the rug between him and the shower, gently pulls the stuffed leopard out from under her arm and sets it on the vanity behind him, then without further ado pulls her blouse over her head.

Bella's eyes go wide with embarrassed shock, and she wraps her arms around the old-fashioned camisole she's wearing underneath, but Edward is done on top and goes for her skirt button instead. Pulling the skirt down, he crouches down with it, keeping one hand on her waist while the other gathers the skirt material near her feet.

"Step up," he tells her, and she obeys, lifting one foot and then the other as Edward works the skirt off her body.

Leaving the rest of her underthings in place, Edward stands and says, "Now strip down and hop into the shower, little girl; I'll be back in a minute to help you dry off and get into your nightgown."

Isabella tries to say "OK," but it just comes out as an incoherent squeak, making Edward smile again as he wraps his arms around her for a quick hug and kiss on the top of her head, before just as quickly letting go and moving back to the bedroom, closing the door partway—but only partway—behind him.

Edward reflects as he moves towards Isabella's bed that in other relationships, with other women, he would be hoping for an act of defiance—an action such as closing the door all the way behind him, or even locking it, so as to give him a reason to deliver the punishment for which both he and his previous partners hungered. Now, with this woman—this girl—he is relieved to hear only the sound of hesitant footsteps into the shower, and is glad, grateful even, to save the pleasure of her open defiance and his remedying it for a future time when she is secure enough in his affection and intentions to enjoy first testing and then experiencing the assertion of his dominance and control over her.

Almost as much as he will.

Edward doesn't hurry in searching out her nightgown, taking a few moments first to survey the room and observe the decorating tastes of Miss Isabella Swan. He sees his flowers, and notes for the first time the card face down on the carpet; reaching down he scoops it up and looks it over, smiling as he guesses how flustered she must have been when reading it.

He moves on to the battered chest of drawers to his left, idly opening each one, unsurprised by the contents but enjoying every confirmation of her simple, innocent, unfashionable tastes.

Guessing that Isabella might have stashed her nightgown under one of the ruffled pillows on her bed, which is covered with a comforter displaying a pattern of blue-and-white china dishes surrounded by daffodils and tulips, Edward pokes around underneath and comes up with both the nightgown and a book. He smiles at the book, and sets it gently on the nightstand, feeling certain for the moment that Isabella is too young, too sweet, too innocent for him to do anything but help and protect her.

This thought makes him angry, whether at the universe or himself he doesn't care, and he picks up the long white gown from the night before impatiently, chastising himself for wasting so much time on someone he cannot ethically pursue.

Any ethical objections are forgotten, however, when he knocks at the still part-way open bathroom door and hears her nervous squeal from the other side of the opaque shower curtain, the predator inside him completely over-ruling the moral guide attempting to thwart his own pursuit.

Instead, he closes the bathroom door firmly behind himself and rolls up his sleeves before grabbing two towels from the bathroom closet and stalking towards the steaming shower. When he reaches the spot where he knows—absolutely knows—she is trembling on the other side of the curtain, shivering in the warm water from what he hopes is combined fear and desire but what he must yet admit may be only fear, he reaches around the curtain and turns off the water, careful to keep his head on his own side of the curtain.

With the water off, he soundlessly hands her a towel, and waits a few heartbeats before instructing, "When you're covered, come on out and I'll help you dry off." He says this gently, the predator relinquishing control for the moment to the tender heart Isabella has unearthed so quickly, and so thoroughly. He knows he will do nothing more than help her dry and dress and tuck her into bed tonight; he pragmatically decides to postpone any decision-making about what may come afterwards to later, after he's had the unexpectedly sublime pleasure of seeing her safely off to sleep.

He smiles at his own weakness for the girl now cautiously sticking some toes out from behind the curtain; prior to Isabella he has never happily anticipated or even passively watched a woman falling asleep before. It is a boundary he has strictly upheld in his previous intimate relationships, and he marvels briefly at how easily he's crossing it now.

Soon Isabella is fully exited from the shower, a towel wrapped around her torso and held with a still-trembling hand. Quickly she casts a shy and worried glance up to read his face. He catches it in time to shine a beaming smile down, and follows up with: "Good girl, Isabella; good girl doing what I tell you to. Here, let me dry your hair."

And grabbing up the second towel after gently positioning her by her shoulders in front of him, Edward proceeds to do so with surprising skill. At least, Isabella is surprised, and so distracted by his agile, gentle hands she forgets to be worried and starts to relax under his touch. She is helped along in this by Edward's running patter, going over the events and stories of dinner, and making her laugh with his imitation of Mrs. Cope and Rosalie obliquely insulting each other.

When he has toweled off her hair, shoulders and arms, Edward kneels on the floor in front of Bella and lifts her hands, one at a time, placing them firmly on his own shoulders. "Lean on me while I dry your legs and feet, sweetheart," he instructs as he starts in drying one of her legs at the highest exposed spot.

As he's about to begin on the other leg, having worked his way down to the littlest toe on the first, Edward pauses. Gingerly, he reaches out and traces around a bruise he's discovered on her knee.

"How did this happen?" he asks, enough anger in his tone that Bella draws back a little, taking an involuntary step backwards as her shoulders round in instinctive effort to protect herself from the intense pain of Edward Cullen's displeasure towards her.

Edward, of course, feels this immediately as her knee leaves his fingertips. He moves swiftly to standing, reaching for Bella's waist as she turns away. Catching her body half-way turned, he pulls her in to him once more, wrapping an arm snugly around her lower back as his other hand goes to a now familiar place cupping the back of her head and pulling her tightly against him.

He has already figured out that the tighter he holds her the faster she calms; he's so quick this time she doesn't even have a chance to start crying.

Edward stands there, holding her, holding the person he is now mentally referring to as "my girl," feeling again the incredibly pleasurable rush of possessive affection that Isabella brings forth in him—has from the first moment he saw her but more and more so with every interaction that lets him know both how much she needs a protector and how afraid she is of him.

He loves the contrast, the tension between those two deep feelings of his girl: her desire for the safety he offers and her fear of what it will cost her. Edward's self-aware enough, and conversant in psychotherapy-speak enough, to recognize the predatory quality to his enjoyment—no, his _rapture_—in this tension, and he's finding it repugnant in himself.

But not so much so that he can make himself do anything but bring on the tension all over again. Besides, he consoles himself for the moment, she clearly needs his intervention right now.

Or someone's, and he's the only one apparently available.

He wonders briefly if he knows someone in his circle of acquaintances who would know someone who could help this girl without falling victim to enjoyment of her vulnerability. But he gets rageful at just the thought of this, and pulls her even more tightly against himself, deciding easily there is no one else in the whole world who would be safe enough, and good enough, for her.

If he suffers the same insufficiency, so be it; he'll figure out later what to do about that. Perhaps his own therapist could help her lose her apparent reflex of self-abasement…and then he's rageful at that thought too, and pulls her in more tightly again.

The almost-painful hold he has her in now makes Bella sigh in contentment, and surrender entirely to the loveliness of the moment by relaxing completely against the strength and power of Edward Cullen's chest.

He feels the sag against his arms as her own muscular control gives way, and grins—then nuzzles into the hair on top of her resting head and repeats his crooning commentary of earlier: "You're such a good girl, Isabella; you're my good little girl."

Inside, Edward's repeating one sentiment over and over again, simply "_Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine!"_

Bella's brain has melted past the point of conscious thought, but if her feeling-state could be summarized, it would be simply, "_His. His. His. His!"_

They stand like that, in perfect, blissful synchrony, for time out of time. Or more precisely, for 15 blissful seconds before Rose knocks, tries to open, then starts banging on the locked bedroom door. "Bella! Bella, are you okay in there? Edward Cullen! Open up this door!"

This snaps Edward out of his reverie and makes Bella cringe against him, something he both loves and hates. He directs the love towards Bella with firm hands petting her hair and squeezing her momentarily impossibly-more-tightly still; he directs the hate towards Rose with a growling reply, "She's perfectly fine, Rosalie. I'm getting her ready for bed. I told you I'd check in with you later, and I will!"

Ignoring the panicked rapping that continues for a little bit afterwards, Edward starts talking to Bella in a deep, authoritative tone, trying to keep her from thinking about her roommate out in the hall and feeling embarrassed about the situation. "Let's finish drying your leg, sweetheart," he starts in, moving both hands to steady Bella at the elbows as he drops cautiously away from her body, watching carefully for signs of panic or a new attempt to flee.

Seeing neither, for Bella is feeling uncustomarily calm, having been somehow soothed by Edward's unashamed and unapologetic rejoinder to Rosalie's concern, he returns to the tender area upon her knee. "So, Isabella, did you injure yourself recently?" he asks carefully, keeping the renewed flare of anger and frustration that she should have been free to hurt herself or, worse, be hurt by someone else out of his tone this time.

Encouraged by his matter-of-fact demeanor, Bella easily nods her head "Yes" in reply. Edward notes the movement out of the corner of his eye, then looks up at her, catching her fully in the face for a moment, and smiles his approval. "Good girl for answering me," he says with amused and affectionate warmth before reaching up a hand to press against her blushing, smiling cheek, his thumb brushing softly under her eye, one finger stroking down her nose.

Then back to business, he picks up the towel again with both hands and rubs below her knee, asking, nonchalantly, "What happened?"

He waits, one heartbeat…two…He keeps his hands on business, the business of her, and by five heartbeats past he hears her intake of breath; by seven he hears her whispered words. "Um, I…fell?" she says, as if she's giving an answer to be graded, hoping she's correct but terrified she isn't.

Smiling at this, his head bowed away from her unguarded view, Edward answers, matter-of-fact and encouraging, "Fell how?"

There's a longer pause now, and some flinching and twisting of feet, though the latter stops as Edward circles the nearest ankle with an unbreakable hold and continues to dry off her foot—communicating through manacle that she is both safe and bound, or rather, safe because she is bound, by him, and by his absolute insistence on her protection. He's past debating himself on this point, and they both feel it.

This time she answers quickly, almost easily. "Um, I was, running away from you?"

Puzzled for a moment, Edward pulls his brows together as he tries to figure out when she had the opportunity to run away from him. "When was this, sweetheart?"

"Tonight, after you…um…called?" Her voice is getting faint at the oblique reference to the series of phone calls between them, and Edward grins at her embarrassment.

"You mean, after you dropped the phone on me?"

Her face flushing crimson, tears pooling in her eyes, Bella barely nods. Edward sees her distress, and stops his laughing at her expense, rising quickly and tossing the towel he's been using to the side in order to wrap both arms around her waist and shelter her against him once more. "Hey, there, baby girl; there's nothing to cry about. I wasn't mad at you."

"But I hung up on you! And ran away! And-and-I didn't do what you told me to!"

"And what happened then?"

"You…you…" There is a pause as Bella thinks about what happened next. Then, cautiously, carefully, like she's presenting a revolutionary new theorem to a panel of skeptics though really _she's_ the one who is skeptical of what she's about to say, "You came and got me?"

"Exactly. I came and got you. Which is precisely what I'm going to do every time you run away or hide from me, until you give it up altogether and just let me take care of you."

"But…but I don't need to be taken care of. I'm…I'm an adult!"

Edward tips his head back and laughs at her adorableness.

Bella's not feeling adorable, but insulted and a little angry, in addition to the ecstasy that courses through her at someone powerful and safe seeing her the way she really feels inside and wanting her just that way, even though she doesn't think it possible he could want her that way for long. And so the defensive, angry part has to insist, "But I am!"

Edward grabs her chin and holds her head steady as he captures her gaze with his own, deadly serious stare. "Isabella Swan, you will never be a grown-up."

"But… but that's not fair!"

"I know, sweetheart; I know." And in that moment, they really do understand each other: the boy who'd been forced to take on adult responsibilities and attitudes as soon as he could walk and talk, and the girl whose brain was wired like a naïve, trusting child's no matter how hard she tried to change it and make it match the expectations and assumptions of those around her. In opposite ways, they were both victims of a world that needed them to be something they weren't, and they were both very tired of the effort required to navigate the growing distance between who they were inside and the roles they played every day.

At least, Edward understood. Bella's understanding was still clouded by misperceptions of both her own nature and Edward's—thinking she was a terrible person, and Edward was a saint, when the reality of his behavior had been very much that of a committed and highly-skilled sinner. But in Bella, he had found the saint he couldn't be and the vulnerability he'd been forced to relinquish—and as this all became clear to him, looking down on her beautiful, open face as he wiped a few more tears away from her eyes, he realized that he was never going to be able to let her go whether that was for the best for her or not.

Smiling ruefully at his own selfishness and her total ignorance of his complete realignment of her future, Edward cups Bella's cheek for a tender moment, leans in and rests his forehead against her own, kisses her once gently, chastely on the lips, then moves into business mode, pulling away except for one hand left at Bella's waist as he digs under the vanity for a hair dryer then wields it with expert skill.

A few minutes pass in heavy silence, as Edward's hands control Isabella's body and they both steal looks at each other in the bathroom mirror while Edward dries her hair. Finally Edward stares at Isabella until her eyes fall on his and she is locked there in his gaze until he reluctantly looks away to return the hair dryer to its place under the sink.

Standing back up behind her, Edward cheerfully says, "Arms up!"

Edward grins when one of Isabella's arms instantly shoots straight up in the air, and he pulls the nightgown on over that arm, her head, and her shoulders and then over the towel that she's still holding tightly closed against her chest with her other hand and arm. When the nightgown reaches a modest location past her waist, with Edward adjusting and straightening it as he pulls it down, he reaches up and removes the towel from below, letting the nightgown drop as he does.

Edward turns away for a moment to hang both towels up to dry while Bella works her own arm through the empty sleeve, and when he turns back he finds her looking at him in the mirror with a huge smile on her face. She surprises him by turning around and rushing in to hug him with great enthusiasm, adding a whispered "Thank you."

She tries to pull away again as quickly as she moved in…blushing and looking down, of course.

But Edward doesn't let her pull away and instead catches both her hands, holding them tight in his own in front of him; bending his knees he lowers to catch her eyes and, once finding them, holds onto her gaze by moving til there's only inches between her face and his. "You're most welcome, sweetheart," he answers, followed quickly by, "Thank you for trusting me."

She smiles and blushes some more at this, merely nodding in return, and Edward laughs lightly at her shyness. Throwing an arm around her and pulling her into his side, he says, "Now we need to brush your teeth and get you into bed. It's far past your bedtime."

Bella's face is aflame at this commentary, for she _knows_ it is insultingly juvenile and highly inappropriate given her age and their social standing to each other, and yet—and yet!—he is treating her exactly how she has dreamed of being treated by someone male and strong and safe and caring for as long as she can remember. She is ashamed of this, but cannot help but soak up Edward's attention and hope for more.

Edward reads this all as he watches her exquisite expressiveness play out across her face and in the actions of her body; the trembling, the foot wiggling and hand shaking but the stillness at his commands and the joy in her eyes at his praise. He cannot quite believe how whole-sale trusting and unjaded she seems to be, and he realizes that Rosalie must have been quite the protector to keep her that way so long in New York City, not to mention college.

Reluctantly realizing he had better not cut Rosalie entirely out of whatever plans he develops for the girl in front of him, he distracts himself from that frustration by focusing on getting Bella's toothbrush ready for her and holding it out to her with the simple instruction, "Brush."


	6. Chapter 6

After watching Bella start to brush and then start to blush with the inevitable formation of toothpaste foam in her mouth and on her lips, and worried that she was more likely to swallow it all than be willing to spit in front of him (he is right), Edward—with twinkling eyes and a smile on his lips—deftly excuses himself from the bathroom with a kiss on the top of her head and a quiet, "I'll be right back, sweetheart. Finish brushing and then into bed, alright?"

The last instruction is issued with his back to the partway-open bathroom door and his eyes on his girl, a sternness in his tone that sends shivers down Bella's back which in turn make Edward flinch—not in fear, but in recoil at the sheer willpower it takes him to pull away from such a beautiful, responsive, absolutely pliable body and mind.

Reassuring himself, and lecturing his libido, he chants _Not tonight. Not tonight. Not tonight! _several grim times as he marches himself out of Bella's bedroom and into the hallway where Rosalie is prowling like an anxious panther.

Looking up at him as he closes Bella's bedroom door firmly but quietly behind him, she even grimaces in such a way that her teeth are bared, letting him know that she knows that he isn't the saint Isabella believes him to be. Far from it.

He is, however, Rosalie has been forcing herself to admit and admit again in her worried circuit up and down the hallway, the seemingly best shot Isabella has ever had at finding a man able to manage her emotions and willing to take care of her in the way she deserves. If he is a little _too_ willing, well, maybe—_maybe_, Rosalie reassures and exhorts herself—that could be fixed with some oversight from her.

Maybe.

Although watching Edward Cullen exit Bella's room with a shit-eating grin on his face isn't making her feel better about the situation. Which means her first words aren't kind, or even polite.

"Pleased with yourself, asshole?" she spits.

Edward is unfazed, having completely expected a knock-down drag-out fight, and is just hoping Rosalie can keep it on a verbal level. With an eye to that goal, he tries to defuse the situation.

Wiping the grin off as best he can, he opens his hands out in front of him and says, "Rose, I swear, I haven't touched her."

Now, that is technically a lie, and they both know it, but that wasn't how he meant it and they both know that too.

After a little huff of angry air, Rose backs off her attack enough to respond in almost-civil terms. "Lucky for you," she mutters before starting for the door to Bella's bedroom.

Edward knowingly risks violence then by stepping in front of her, blocking her access to the doorknob. "Wait, Rose, we need to talk first."

Rose is about to lose her grip on her defensive rage and is mentally measuring the circumference of Edward's neck in preparation for strangling him, when Edward surprises her by touching her first.

Placing his open palms gently against her upper arms, Edward says earnestly, "Please, Rosalie. She's mine no matter what you do, but I'd much rather do this with you than alone; she'll be happier that way."

Rose instantly forgives him too for the lie of his preference for her involvement–for she's not fool enough to believe Edward Cullen would ever welcome the participation of anyone else, other than professionals consulted solely for their expertise, in directing the behavior of someone he cares about; someone he _wants_ very much to control.

She is, however, grateful that he cares enough about Bella to recognize the importance of Rose's friendship with her, and selfless enough to inconvenience or constrain himself in order to maintain it.

Not to mention relieved for her own sake that she won't have to choose quite so clearly between her friend's happiness and her own. Rose does not make friendships easily nor trust people lightly, so the loss of intimate contact with Bella would leave an enormous void in her life, one that would be very difficult to fill.

Sighing her resignation as well as her relief, Rosalie says, with markedly less animosity than before, "Well, I suppose I'll consider helping you, but only if you make certain promises."

"Of course," Edward answers easily, grateful himself for her quick capitulation.

"In writing," Rosalie clarifies with acid back in her tone and arched eyebrows, letting Edward know both her awareness of certain other written agreements he's made with certain other young women, and her intention to make things as difficult as possible for him for as long as she can.

"Naturally." Edward's not surprised that Rose has ferreted out some of his secrets from his sister and near brother-in-law, and he's not upset by it. Just because he values and protects his privacy does not mean he feels he has anything to hide—at least not in the area where Rose has been snooping.

Proving this to her, he continues unperturbed, "Shall we delay this conversation for another day to give you time to prepare the contract?"

Starting to enjoy the exchange in her usual lawyerly way, Rosalie tips her head to the side, pretending to think for a moment, then bites back with, "I wasn't thinking of it as a contract, so much as a blood oath."

Edward grins; he likes her fight, especially knowing he's going to win. "I prefer contracts; they're less messy. In multiple ways."

Rose snorts a little, backs down a little more. "I can do a contract," she says somehow both petulantly and defensively.

"So I've heard," Edward rewards her with wry humor, approval of her professional skill intentionally implied. Luckily for both of them, his respect for her legal work is genuine.

"My office, 10 a.m. Monday," Rosalie spits, daring him to contradict her but hoping he won't.

"Done," Edward agrees easily once more, knowing his agreement to Rosalie's terms of timing seals his victory on the infinitely more important issue: Isabella.

Rose sighs. She knows she's winning the battle and losing the war. "I suppose you're going to want to see her again before then."

Edward smiles at this and says: "I'll be spending the whole weekend with her, and escorting her to work Monday morning on my way to go see you. Would you like to be included in some of those plans?"

"All of them." Rosalie challenges him with her eyes to try and stop her.

Edward ignores the challenge, knowing Rose's career alone will ensure he gets Isabella to himself soon and often.

"Fair enough," he announces, matter-of-factly. "First up tomorrow is a visit to the Zoo."

Rose jumps on this apparent failure in Bella-planning. "Bella hates zoos; they make her sad."

"Even the gift shops?" Edward clarifies, not surprised at Bella having strong emotions towards anything.

"You're going to take her to a zoo gift shop?" Rosalie _is_ surprised, not having expected Edward Cullen to be a relationship-shopper anywhere other than Tiffany's, or maybe Harry Winston's.

"I have another contract I have to complete," Edward willingly explains, "although this one's only verbal, and given the other party is a minor probably unenforceable. But honor dictates I buy the boy a stuffed gorilla, 'the big one' to be precise, from the Central Park Zoo, and I thought it might be a pleasant outing for Isabella. But I suppose if she hates zoos…" and Edward trails off, considering the internet shopping possibilities and making sure to give Rosalie plenty of opportunity to hang herself with her own rope.

Rose's shoulders drop at her loss of an opportunity to show Edward up in his knowledge of her friend; she forces herself to admit the truth of the matter as hard as it is to get the words out of her mouth.

"Actually," she says slowly, "she'd probably love that. As long as you stay away from the real gorillas."

"Got it. May I ask why?"

"She's convinced they're suicidally depressed. We went once and she talked about it for weeks; how miserable they all clearly were, especially the big male all alone. It really upset her."

"We don't want that. I don't suppose it occurred to her _why_ the big male was all alone?"

"No, she doesn't usually think in those terms. She thought they were just being cruel to him."

"I can't argue; zoos do seem cruel in principle. Was she really bothered by that for weeks?" Edward enquires, loving Bella's strong emotions and trying to understand them better in order to control them, for her own sake as much as his.

"She still brings it up sometimes; she says it ruined Central Park for her because she feels guilty enjoying herself someplace where helpless creatures are so miserable," Rosalie replies, a bittersweet quality to the reminiscence about her friend whom she knows will not be her roommate and de facto sister much longer.

"How in the world has she survived so far?" Edward wonders aloud, awed at his Isabella's amazing reactivity and disturbed at how vulnerable it's made her, before him.

"I do my best," Rose answers with both defensiveness and pride.

"That much is clear," Edward says with a respectful nod in Rosalie's direction.

"I better get back in there and say good night before she wonders where I've gone," Edward continues. "I'll be here in the morning with breakfast. Any requests?"

"Just…don't start something with her you can't finish. She won't get over it." Rose's tone is more pleading than angry now.

"I hope not; I know I won't."

He waits a moment for a response, then follows up with, "You don't believe me."

"I just find it hard to believe; the great Edward Cullen being interested in my roommate."

"And yet, you love her so much I'm quite certain you'd kill me for her if you had to," he points out.

"You're right," Rosalie affirms with one emphatic nod.

"So our Isabella brings out strong reactions in people," Edward summarizes, as if he's said all there is to say on the matter of his extreme and near-instantaneous attraction to her. "Anyone else with strong reactions I should know about?" he adds, both data-gathering and leading the discussion off of himself.

"If you're asking about other relationships, no, she's never been in one."

_"__Never_?" Edward's not surprised Bella's single; she is, after all, the living definition of "high maintenance" in emotional terms. But he didn't expect to be fortunate enough to be her first…everything.

"Why is that so hard to believe? You've met her."

"Yes, but what I can't understand is how she's yet to meet even a somewhat-intelligent predator with just a modicum of good taste. How could she be so lucky?"

"I don't know; but I'm not sure I'd call it luck exactly," Rosalie answers slowly, giving Edward's question some serious thought. "She scares most men away and she runs away from the rest. Probably any predators she's crossed paths with have figured she's not worth the trouble."

"I'm certain she's worth the trouble."

"You're a smart man. But remember that other part as well."

"You mean the part where you're willing to kill me to protect your friend?"

"That's the one." Rose is actually much more insecure than she sounds, in some ways almost as vulnerable as Bella. Edward, with his uncanny ability to read people and his background knowledge of Rosalie's circumstances, realizes this, but is gentleman and strategist enough not to call her bluff.

Instead, he reassures his newly-acquired girlfriend's anxious soon-to-be-ex-roommate, "I won't forget," leaving out the fact that he's not afraid of her at all. "Do you want to walk me to the door when I'm done?"

"No, I think you can see yourself out. I'll count the silver later."

Edward tips his head back and laughs at this, then leans in and kisses Rosalie on the far side of her cheek. She is surprised by this act of affection on his part, and actually blushes slightly, something she hasn't done since the first year of law school for far less pleasant reasons.

Trying to recover her bitch-face, she mutters, "Tell Bella I'll be in to clean up after you later." She's snarking at Edward over her shoulder as she moves off towards her room, though the bravado is lacking conviction.

Edward notes this and smiles, replying, "Fine, but if I do this right she'll be asleep. Good night, Rose," as he opens Bella's door behind him, slipping inside while he's speaking.

The Rosalie formalities dealt with, he closes the door and turns around to find: an empty room. He's not exactly surprised, and quickly assesses the equally empty and dark bathroom before checking out the window which is mercifully closed and locked.

At the relief he feels not to see the curtains blowing free, he realizes he's going to have to do more than talk a good game if he's going to keep Isabella from being her own worst enemy, and hurting herself, perhaps irreparably, in the necessary courtship dance, (_or shark attack_ he thinks to himself a little ruefully), of her repeatedly running away from him—or trying to—as he circles inexorably closer and closer to her struggling body and mind.

Disturbed by his own comparison of his ultimate and complete claiming of Isabella with a shark's bloody and fatal consumption of the innocent hiding somewhere in the room, he decides to set aside thoughts of the future, including such dark possibilities as Isabella jumping out her window to escape his attentions, for later dispassionate analysis and logical problem-solving.

Bringing himself back to the concerns of the moment, Edward grins at the cracked closet door; he is quite certain it was all the way closed when he exited the bedroom.

Walking swiftly over, he pushes the closet door further open as he inquires, "Isabella?" into the darkness.

He doesn't get more of a response than some clothes rustling, but it's enough to make him ignore the rest of the hiding places and move into the closet himself, feeling for the light switch as he opens the door wide.

"Isabella, sweetheart, tell me where you're hiding please," he asks, as matter-of-factly as if he's asking a waiter for more wine or an after-dinner coffee.

She doesn't answer per se, but she does emit a small squeak, to which Edward responds just as if she had stood up and waved her hands while saying, "Over here! I'm over here."

"Good girl," he croons while moving straight for the back left corner. "Good girl for answering me," he echoes as he crouches down next to some totes on the floor (Bella has far fewer clothes, especially shoes, in her closet than Rosalie) and peers under some hanging skirts to find Bella curled up in the corner, her back to him.

Pulling her out across the closet floor, Edward has his arms around her sides, his hands laced under her knees as he drags her into his lap.

Bella curls up further into herself as he removes her from her hiding place, like a human pill bug—which becomes a term of endearment Edward uses with her later.

But when she hits his lap she uncurls enough to curl into Edward instead, her arms going round his neck and her face pressing up against his chest. And of course, she starts to cry, though there are very few tears left in her to be shed.

So she sobs a couple times, shuddering against Edward and in his arms… then goes silent as he comforts her, his hands sliding against her, his chin tucked against her head, his arms tight around her body, his voice buzzing softly in her ear, saying things like, "That's my girl; that's my good girl, my very good girl. You're safe now, Isabella; you're with me."

They sit there a little while, Edward enjoying the sweetness of holding her and Bella slipping into an emotionally-exhausted sleep.

Edward finally notices the growing regularity of her breathing, and inwardly chastises himself for not getting her to bed sooner while he says, rising up off the floor with her in his arms, "To bed then, sweet girl. To bed until tomorrow."

He navigates easily the short distance to her double bed, a hand-me-down from Rosalie's childhood bedroom or Bella would still be sleeping in the twin bed from her own childhood. As it is, the double feels small to Edward once he has her tucked under the blankets and himself stretched out on top, and he considers for a moment having a new, larger bed delivered there the next day but quickly decides against it as not being conducive to his ultimate goal of getting her into his own bed in his own home.

Sighing at the realization he would have to leave her soon, Edward says quietly as he runs his fingertips gently across her cheeks, "Sleep now, Isabella. Sleep, and I will be here in the morning."

"Thank you, Edward," Bella says so softly it's little more than a humming noise.

But Edward, all his senses tuned towards her, catches it and smiles, his own eyes filling for a moment as his heart overflows with a gratitude so poignant and vulnerable it hurts him physically, though in the most welcome—if frightening—way.

Fighting back the emotion of the moment and regaining his customary control, Edward leans down and places the lightest kiss possible on her forehead, whispering, "You're most welcome, sweetheart—to all I have and more."

Then he reaches over and turns out the bedside lamp he had turned on earlier, plunging the room into darkness except for the street lights sneaking through the curtains at their edges.

Edward lies next to a sleeping Isabella for longer than he meant to, half-asleep himself, until a text from Taylor reminds him of his need to return to his own home and tend to various matters so as to re-claim Isabella tomorrow.

He hates the necessity of his exit, and even contemplates forgoing it—but his long-dominant business mind overrules the vague misgivings and selfish complaints of the rest of him and insists on separating for the moment in order to clear his head and proceed as efficiently as possible.

He will regret his favoring of efficiency and business-like expediency before the new day is even half-way started, yet he forces himself to leave the sleeping girl, assuring himself as he does so that there is no way she can get into any trouble before he returns bright and early in the morning with whatever breakfast he chooses to make her eat.

He is wrong.

XxXxXx

_Not much, but better than nothing? Hope this update finds you all healthy and safe and more happy than not. Will try to keep this one cooking while I sort out the rest!_

_Be well,_

_liza_

_p.s. I know I'm playing with facts here—the Central Park Zoo apparently hasn't had gorillas since the 1980's, thank goodness. But pretending they do worked for the story, so please forgive me the fabrication—just add it to the list (of things to forgive me for, not of fabrications…as I've said before, emotionally-speaking, I try very hard only to write truth, or things that could be true if we allowed for the existence of an Edward Cullen in the real world)._

_On another note, I have been stuck in a debate with myself on whether or not to include a postscript consisting of one of those stories I've started but have no strong intention of finishing, and haven't fleshed out with background or motivations or diddly squat. These are the "drabbles" that I turn to for my own emotional comfort when I'm drained from the day and too tired to try and write sensibly (snorting noises understood and forgiven). I feel like I'm cheating when I do that, as well as profoundly ungracious, and I don't like either feeling, so want to share._

_HOWEVER…the older I get and the more I read about how so many women like me/like us—vulnerably relational and maybe high-feeling too—but in geographic areas and economic/social categories that allow for or actively encourage their exploitation rather than their protection are used and abused in the most horrific ways for years and excruciating lifetimes by people as manipulative as any Edward I write but without the compassion or caring or loyalty…well, I wonder sometimes if I should just delete the lot of what I've written._

_I always conclude that is overkill; that we're as entitled as anyone to both our fantasies borne of unmet need and to the process of detangling our psyches that exploring those fantasies facilitates. But then I take a closer look at my storylines, and wonder, "Is this one okay, or will it do more harm than good?" And I look at my author's notes and think, "Is it a mistake to discuss internet communities or BDSM-conceived ideas of sexuality when I am convinced neither—as a general rule—are safe places for people like us to be?" _

_So I dither, and fail to post, both unwilling not to share that which makes my heart feel better and equally unwilling to add fuel to the desperate fires of painfully alone and overwhelmed high-feeling vulnerable-relational women with the sense they have nothing to lose, as naïve as that sense may be._

_I had hoped typing this would help me come to a conclusion, and I guess I will post without the postscript of a Bella behaving very typically of the vulnerable-relational type of young woman I used to be, and maybe you too, and definitely like so many unfortunate and suffering victims of manipulators that care for people like us only as goods to exploit and profit from… because no matter how many times I caution that trying to find someone to take you over and keep you safe is most likely to lead to being hurt and devastated or even worse horribly abused, and not to the emotional nirvana or at least peace we all seek, I suspect that most of us will be unable to believe that true without finding out the hard, or almost-hard (as in my case) way. _

_So maybe I'm a hypocrite and ridiculously obtuse; it's certainly not breaking news that there are on-line communities available with people willing to say whatever they need to say to get access to your bank account or your body. And maybe someday I'll post the story I'm leaving off today as an illustration of just how we get talked into doing things we're not comfortable with by people aware of our relational wiring and adept at exploiting this._

_Until then, please be as well as you can possibly manage, because the world needs you. It needs your emotional energy, and your affection, and your capacity for forgiveness and empathy and relational understanding. I wish I knew how to give you more, something useful…even if I am too big a coward to read my personal messages (working on that, as usual). Here's to us, and the work ahead of us to make it easier for those coming behind. XOXO MUSH, liza_


	7. Chapter 7

_This is for the wonderful wantonlytoread, for her gentle and patient encouragement, and for all my other Fanfic friends (you know who you are, you lovely ladies-THANK YOU! I'll be back in my in-box soon) for their loyal support as well as their uplifting, insightful conversation...and for the beauty they all bring to the world in their non-fanfiction lives too._

_And for my face-to-face friend, Rebecca, who never (ever) points out how crazy I am to STILL be posting nude emotion-selfies and needy fanfic on here at my ripe (and sometimes rotten) old age._

_Finally, it's for you, dear remaining reader, with my apology for how little I get posted of late. __Like you, I battle every day to balance one important responsibility against another, to give a little love and effort to all the people and causes so in need of it, while trying not to overlook myself lest I throw up my hands at all there is to do with the childish frustration of an unloved psyche and an uncared-for body._

_Which is how I justify the time I steal for writing, and for reading—the maintenance of that psyche, the soul-chocolate that makes me feel loved and wanted and valued and secure and beautiful, __even if it's only in my imagination._

_But it's even easier to justify if I'm writing for you too, so thank you for your time in reading this, and in writing reviews if you feel like doing so. __I'm still struggling to accept feedback, as my life has not been a series of positive experiences with other people's opinions of me (wink, wink, self-sarcastic understatement), but that doesn't mean I don't value **your** __opinions, or your suggestions, or most especially, your **feelings**. __I just don't know what to do with them yet, as I'm still trying to make good use of my own._

_That's probably enough said for a beautiful spring morning with two doggies crossing their legs and eyeing their leashes, so a happy spring to you! __And may beauty bloom in your life as well as in your garden, wherever it may be._

_Yours with love,_

_liza_

_p.s. I feel I've been forgetting to thank Ms. Stephenie Meyer in my recent postings, and that won't do. __The meta-characters she created—the archetypes in modern dress—serve us so well, as much in their foibles and failures as in their strength and beauty. __Like a literary mirror, she's given us the power to see ourselves more clearly, and be surprised by what we find, both good and bad, staring back._

_As I get older, I worry less about finding a knife-wielding (or vampire-fanged) murderer behind me in a foggy bathroom mirror, and worry more about finding the selfish, violent pieces of my own soul staring back at me from within the faces and actions of those I love, and those I meet along the way. __Which burden is what made Edward, Edward, isn't it?_

_So I must learn from __New Moon__, and my own life's disasters, and not throw all the good away just because of the blood-thirsty, or affection- and praise-hungry, vampire within, but keep holding on to what is loving and beautiful—in me, in you, and in this space we share._

_Blessings and thanks be to SM (and Fanfiction dot net) for creating this space to begin with, and blessings and thanks be to you for sharing it with me!_

XxXxXx

Bella leaves her dreams—unusually intense and satisfying—slowly in the morning. She didn't set her alarm the night before, so it's the sunlight pouring in the window that forces her awake.

She feels _happy_ when she finally wakes up, though she doesn't know or remember why. Awash in a sublime sense of contentment and in the sunshine, she stretches under the covers, humming with pleasure.

Until her hand brushes against a piece of paper lying on the pillow next to her own. The moment she feels this unexpected item in her sleeping space, a knot forms in her stomach, and the contentment shades into an uncertainty—still happy at its base, but with a flavor of anxious worry that grows as she sits up, dragging the paper in front of her and seeing the writing on it.

It is somehow both elegant and masculine, the long-looped scrawled handwriting in bold black ink across a piece of her own notepaper. And what it says shatters the contentment entirely, leaving only the anxious worry grown into nauseating fear.

_Good morning, Isabella!_

_Stay put in bed, Sweetheart. __I'll be there soon with breakfast._

Underneath the command—which sends shivers up her neck and across her chest, making her pull the blanket around her more tightly as she draws in a deep breath—was another word, crossed out: _Yours_.

And beneath that were two words, underlined with a flourish and bigger than the rest: _Your Edward_.

That does it.

Casting the note aside like it is setting her hand on fire, Bella leaps out of bed with unaccustomed grace, landing in a crouch on the floor beside her bed like a gymnast dismounting from a vault.

Standing up straight, she looks wildly around the room, expecting to find someone watching her—and both relieved and disappointed that no one is there.

She moves quickly to the bathroom, checking over her shoulder as she goes as if expecting someone to barge in at any second, and attends to her most–pressing morning need. She's so distracted by the potent combination of anxious fear and exhilarating hope that she doesn't notice the stuffed snow leopard staring at her from its perch between the cold- and hot-water handles of the sink before she's standing in front of it.

Bella stares back for a moment or two. Then, after quickly washing and drying her hands without taking her eyes off the stuffed animal, she gingerly reaches out her hand for the notepaper (one of her own again) folded and tucked between the leopard's head and paws. _Roaaarrrrr! __Back to bed, Isabella! __Your Edward says so,_ is what she reads.

Dropping the note in the sink this time, she races for the bathroom linen closet where she keeps, among other things, her running clothes. Stripping off her nightgown and dressing faster than she ever has before, she sweeps her hair up in a messy ponytail as she runs out of the bathroom and then her bedroom and down the hall, not stopping except to grab her keys from the entryway (but not her phone).

After racing down the stairs to the lobby, she's out the front door and across the street to Central Park, losing herself in the Saturday morning throngs just moments before a large black Audi SUV pulls up in front of her building. It immediately discharges one Edward Cullen onto the sidewalk with two bags containing the promised breakfast in his hands.

Edward pauses at the front door. Something—a sixth sense perhaps, or more likely a growing understanding of Isabella's tendency to flee overwhelming situations and people—makes him turn around and scan the busy scene in the park across the way.

But he finds nothing of consequence; just the predictable stream of people heading into the park on a beautiful fall morning.

Frowning at his growing sense of unease, Edward enters the security code, then moves with assurance into the building. He races up the same stairs, taking them two at a time, that Bella had just raced down.

Reaching Bella's and Rose's apartment, Edward raps once loudly before letting himself in with the key he lifted from Mrs. Cope the night before.

Not hearing anybody stirring, Edward deposits breakfast on the kitchen table then strides towards Bella's bedroom while saying loudly, "Good morning, ladies. It's just me." He checks all the rooms on his way to verify they're Isabella-less, which of course they are.

When he finds Bella's bedroom door open, Edward frowns a second time—more deeply now as his unease has increased to real worry—and walks right in. He quickly takes in the disheveled bed, his crumpled note tossed to the side, and the open bathroom door…and his heartbeat ramps up as the familiar-from-long-ago bitter taste of panic fills his mouth.

Calling out "Isabella" without hope of an answer, Edward sticks his head in the bathroom, surveys the second note in the sink and the open linen closet door, and heads back out, moving faster than before, first for a quick survey of the bedroom's closet, then down the hallway to Rose's room.

After knocking loudly on her closed bedroom door, he gruffly shouts, "Rose! I'm coming in!" as he makes good on his word.

Rosalie has stirred at the noise, and is just rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as Edward makes his intrusive entrance.

"Rosalie!"

"Edward!"

They speak at the same time and in matching tones of irritation, although Edward's has an urgency to it that Rose notices even in her half-awake and fully-ticked-off state. Scowling at the intruder, she spits, "There had better be a good reason for your presence in my bedroom without an invitation."

Edward ignores the bluster and asks urgently, "Where is Isabella?"

Rose frowns at him. She's irritated further by his use of Bella's full name, but also concerned at Edward's panicked tone. "I don't know! I haven't been up yet, in case you haven't noticed. Isn't she in her room?"

"No, Rose, she isn't. She woke, appears to have gotten dressed—is there someplace she usually goes on Saturday mornings? Out for breakfast with a friend, maybe?"

Rose is not happy to have to tell Edward what Bella usually does, so she looks down and picks at a blanket on her bed as she answers, in an affected-off-hand tone, "Oh, she's probably gone out for her morning run."

She's right to not want to tell him this. His reaction is explosive. "Her _morning run?" _he repeats incredulously, then adds, **_"_****_Alone?"_**

Rose is immediately on the defensive. "Yes, Edward, _alone._ This may come as a shock to you, but modern women do many things alone. We go to work alone, we eat out alone, we even—" and here she pauses to put her hands to her cheeks and drop her jaw in mock surprise—"go running in highly-populated public spaces alone sometimes. It isn't a problem."

Edward glares at her, then spits back, "You're right. It's not a problem; it's a disaster! Where does she usually go?"

"Into the Park, of course. And it's hardly a disaster, Edward. She runs there almost every day!"

"Not anymore she doesn't," he throws back at her as he exits Rosalie's room and jogs to the exit, pulling out his phone as he goes.

Pulling up Isabella Swan's cell number, he hits "Connect" as he reaches for the front door, then pauses on the threshold as he hears the most unwelcome sound of a cell phone ringing on the entryway table.

Turning back around, he picks up the offending instrument and verifies it is indeed Bella's cell phone, an unbelievably old-fashioned model that he pockets, knowing he will be replacing it that day—just as soon as he's located his girl.

Unable to trace her with technology, he realizes he's going to need man-power, so he calls Taylor next as he goes back down the stairs, having ignored the hollered inquiries from Rose's room as she goes about getting dressed in running gear herself, almost as quickly as Isabella had earlier that morning.

Following Edward down the stairs, Rose comes up to where he is standing on the sidewalk, leaning into an open door of the idling SUV and strategizing with Taylor.

Taylor indicates with a glance that someone is standing there, causing Edward to look back over his shoulder Rosalie's direction.

He spits out "What?" at her, more-than-a-little rudely in his fear and anger.

"I'm here to help you find Bella," Rose responds, too chastened at the new awareness of how irresponsible she's been in allowing, even encouraging, Bella to run around New York City by herself to take offense at Edward's tone.

Edward stares at her for a second, assessing the seriousness of her bearing and the lack of snark in her response, and, deciding she will make a useful ally in the hunt, says simply, "Good."

Stepping to the side a little and opening the Audi's door wider, Edward briskly waves Rose into the huddle and she joins them, offering what she knows about Bella's preferred paths.

Rose's knowledge is not as extensive as the two men would have hoped, for she is not a morning person and very rarely accompanies Bella on her Central Park jogging excursions. But it gives them two likely routes as starting points, with the benefit that the routes head out in opposite directions and come back the same main middle path, allowing them to attempt a pincer maneuver—as long as their quarry is indeed in the Park and in the general vicinity of their search.

To cover the other contingencies, Taylor is calling up the available security staff Edward has working either at his home or his company headquarters, as well as any off-duty security staff that can be tracked down, while also disseminating Isabella's photo to all of his extensive law-enforcement and private security contacts around the City.

The photo is one taken surreptitiously of Bella by Edward at the table the night before. It is a slightly-off-center head shot, Isabella's chin resting against one of her hands and her beautiful face alight with happiness while engrossed in the conversation around her.

Edward had already made the stolen photo his phone's wallpaper in the car on the way home the night before. And though his heart hurts at how quickly and ignorantly he has allowed the precious girl in it to face the dangers of the world alone, he is grateful indeed that he has the picture for use in tracking her down.

Then, when she has been located and brought home safe and sound, he promises himself, he will make certain she is never this vulnerable, and he is never this afraid, ever, ever again.

Not waiting for Taylor, who will be kept very busy for some time making phone calls and sending texts then fielding the inquiries and hopefully useful information that will come in return, Edward and Rose agree on the route each will take and run across the street—unapologetically jaywalking with the blaring horns to prove it—to get started in the search.

Each has their cell phone gripped firmly in their hands, a photo of Isabella at the ready for inquiring of sidewalk vendors or security guards or old ladies on park benches as they run their routes.

It's Edward who gets the first sighting. It's second-hand, from a particularly gregarious homeless woman in residence on her favorite Central Park perch: a bench situated next to the trash can by a hot dog and pretzel vendor, where she often is able to intercept goodies that would otherwise go to waste.

Edward had taken a precious moment to share his Isabella photo—and a $50 bill—with the vendor himself, but the vendor had just arrived and had been too occupied setting up shop for the day to pay any attention to all the passers-by.

"Yoo-hoo! Young man!" the both more- and less-decrepit dowager than the one he had dealt with the night before who is sitting just a few feet away calls to him with authority and promise.

Edward decides to trust the promise, so instead of ignoring the summons and continuing on, he makes direct eye contact, nods, and jogs quickly over to the royal seat.

Sitting down a respectful distance away, Edward holds his phone out to the old lady and asks, "Have you seen this girl jog by today?"

The lady looks at the picture and smiles, both at the girl's beauty and innocence (which in her world is even more impressive, desirable and absolutely impossible than physically attractive features), and at the fact that indeed, she has seen the girl this morning.

Edward sees the light of what he hopes is recognition and leans in closer, despite the smell. "Please, which way did she go?"

The lady sizes him up now, conducting her own assessment as to whether this fancy young man in expensive-looking leather shoes and bearing unusually-sophisticated gadgetry (not just the watch and cell-phone, but the subtly-designed ear piece for maintaining contact with Taylor catch her sharp eyes) is up to any good, or not. She may be destitute, but her mind continues more sharp and agile than most…albeit burdened and diminished as it must be by the strain of her daily fight for survival. In particular, she is quite skilled at assessing the wealth, intentions and both moral and practical trajectories of those around her—and almost always better than those she sums up are at understanding themselves.

Tilting her head to the side, her eyes narrow as the worthy lady (her name, long-forgotten, is Amelia May) stares at Edward, as if she is flipping through the magnification levels to get to the absolute clearest picture of his private soul.

Edward, desperate not to ruin this opportunity for concrete information on Isabella's whereabouts, waits patiently as Amelia May conducts her survey and sits back, weighing her evidence. "Why do you want to know?" she finally asks, her voice quieter now and sounding more raspy and disused at such an intimate volume.

Edward doesn't hesitate. "Because she's alone, and scared, and Central Park is no place for someone like her to be running around by herself."

Amelia May nods at this; it's a good answer. He passes so far, but there's one more important question he must answer. Lowering her brows, her eyes unblinking and intense, she leans in to Edward and bites back, "_Why_ is she alone and scared?"

Edward pauses a moment, and laughs once, briefly and without humor. He feels like he's fallen into a medieval quest, or a mythical story—one with a series of hideous challenges with frightening creatures to survive before being rewarded with…the princess. Or a golden fleece or some-such, but Edward has no use for gold.

Closing his eyes briefly as he draws breath to respond, Edward channels his inner valiant knight, a personage he previously didn't know was in him and now is getting stronger with every passing moment spent in Isabella's presence or in the thrall of her absence. "Because I made a grave error in judgment leaving her alone last night after promising I would take care of her. Because I am everything she both most wants and most fears, as she can't let herself believe that I am a man of my word, and that I genuinely _want_ her, no _need_ her, and value her in a way all the other idiots, especially male idiots, in her life before me have not. Which means I have to be one step ahead of her psyche and its attempts to protect itself, and her, and not one step behind like I am this morning."

Finally, his eyes open and his mind clear, he turns back to the lady watching him and concludes, "Which is why I really need your help in telling me which way she ran. Please."

Amelia May smiles at him, revealing all her missing teeth. He's passed. And her own world is just a little brighter, knowing such chivalry still exists somewhere, even if it has no direct bearing on her. "Alright then. She ran towards the ruckus over there," and her trembling hand points down the main path that Edward had already been following, which they can both see leads towards some event underway with a large number of people gathered, the rumble of many feet and voices punctuated by occasional cheers in response to an over-amplified announcer's voice.

Edward nods and rises, disappointed at the mob scene awaiting him in which locating a short, shy and skittish girl may be harder than finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

He turns back towards the lady as she finishes, "But she turned around and ran back this way, then took that path there." Her tremulous voice and trembling hand finish in synchrony, both now pointing towards a little-used foot path branching off under some trees to the right of the main walkway.

Edward grins, his good humor as close to restored as it will be until Isabella's hand is in his own, and says "Thank you!" before running off in the direction she's indicated. After two footfalls he pivots, then asks, "Will you be here a while longer?"

She laughs at him; a cackle, really. "Where else am I going to go, young man?"

Edward nods once gravely in return. "Until later then. I'll introduce you to my girl."

And with a wink, he's off, raising a spray of dirt and dust as he sprints down the narrow path he never would have taken without Amelia May's help.

Amelia May claps her hands together and laughs her pleasure, but is immediately caught back up in her own life as the indulgent parent of a greedy child approaches the trash can with a pretzel with only one bite out of it and an almost-full cup of strawberry smoothie. "Now now, don't waste good food!" she remonstrates, reaching out her hands, her claw-like hands—the physical detail that bears the most resemblance to her counterpart back in the ritzy Central Park apartment building overlooking her bench.

And with a still-warm pretzel and still-cold smoothie to enjoy as the sun shines down, along with the satisfaction of having made someone else's life turn out better than her own, the happiness of Amelia May's morning is complete.

XxXxXx

Bella, on the other hand, is anything but happy. She's overwhelmed, lost, and scared, and growing exponentially more so as she finds herself in a removed glen, a few boulders around a grassy patch and a number of overhanging trees providing privacy, where a knot of men has already gathered.

As she jogs between the rocks that mark the entry to the little area, Bella pauses, and watches wide-eyed as the knot opens up revealing four young to middle-aged men in various states of poor hygiene and disrepair. One is holding an open liquor bottle, and they all smell as if they have been partaking of it.

Bella wisely starts to re-trace her steps, but in moving backwards bounces off what she thinks is a rock that wasn't there before, falling forward onto the ground.

The men laugh, and as a group move towards her, making Bella scramble back up quickly and turn to find her way back the way she's come from—only she can't see the way out because it's blocked by a fifth man she had passed in the bushes to the side, relieving himself discreetly enough that she didn't see him until he'd boxed her in.

"Well, look what Jerry's caught for us!" one of the men in the middle, the one with the gold tooth in front and the ripped plaid shirt that hasn't been washed for a very long time, croons.

The men are now circled around her, most not quite close enough to touch her yet but spaced so that she wouldn't be able to escape between them—as Bella realizes after a quick survey of the circle. Wrapping her arms around herself to try and counter the intense cold that has her body shaking and her voice quavering, Bella speaks to the man called Jerry and pleads, "Please, let me through? I need—I need to go home!"

Most of the men around her laugh at this earnest request, with varying degrees of evil pleasure and awkward discomfort, for only one of them—the gold-toothed ringleader—would truly like to cause the young girl suffering for the pleasure of it, while two more are glad to take their own animal satisfaction wherever they can find it and are hoping they might find it here.

The other two, including the hapless Jerry, are dismayed at being caught themselves in this situation, turned ugly so quickly, but without the strength of character to stand up to the ringleader or defy their friends' desires. They also both don't realize that there is another in their group feeling the wrongness as they each do, or they might—_maybe_—have utilized the strength in their small number to at least leave the scene.

But they both pretend, fooling each other better than the psychopath in charge, who delights in torturing them with their consciences…but not nearly as much as he's going to enjoy torturing the terrified little girl trembling in his lair. He's just calculating how long it's likely to take for the girl to piss herself, licking his lips at the thought of the smell—and taste—of her fear, when his growing pleasure is interrupted by a very unwelcome sound: an aggressive male voice from outside of his little party.

"Let. Her. Go." The command is clear, as is the threat underlying it.

The psychopath scoffs; a quick survey shows only one man present, and a relatively thin, unarmed one at that. "Get out of here," he spits back at the intruder, his own threat manifested not just in his tone, but in the hand that pulls out an oversized hunting knife.

He's glad the girl is staring at her would-be savior and not at him, for he's eagerly anticipating watching her pupils dilate when he lets her see the knife for the first time. He'll fix that asshole boy scout good if the surprise of the first knife sighting, and the satisfaction that always brings him, is ruined.

Then again, maybe he should fix the boy scout anyway. After all, there's five—

"Where the f- are you going?" the psychopath growls at the two cowards trying to slink away into the underbrush.

"He's got a phone!" squeaks Reggie, an even bigger p- than Jerry in the ringleader's estimation, and so he's just about to echo back "He's got a phone!" in his highest, squeakiest, most-derisive voice when he realizes that indeed, the intruder does have a phone, and appears to be using it for a series of group photo shots.

And just as he's about to lunge for the intruding asshole and do the dirty work himself—normally he prefers to do only the fun stuff, and leave the initial knocking down and incapacitating to his willing accomplices, but the idiots are slow to get started and so won't work fast enough for pretty rich boy here—he hears p.r.b./asshole-boy scout talking out loud, as if to himself, "Got the pictures, Taylor?"

And the psychopath, being as smart as most psychopaths are, realizes that he may be the one at the disadvantage now. Which would enrage him, if he was capable of such strong emotion, but instead is more of an annoying realization quickly acted on as he backs away towards the opposite path exiting the clearing where Reggie and Jerry have already fled.

Realizing his two most willing, though stupid, associates remain standing, drooling over the little girl still staring at the intruder, he throws out, "Enjoy the day then; we'll be going" and tips his head un-subtly behind him when Marcus and Jonny finally look his way before he turns around and strolls away—waiting to pick it up to a jog until he is out of the clearing and hearing the police sirens headed his way.

It is not his day, as becomes clear to the psychopath when he exits straight into the waiting cuffs of a park police detachment. He'd been immediately id'd off the photos taken by Edward and forwarded by Taylor to Taylor's top contact at the NYPD, where the central figure was well-known as a person of interest in several federal crimes, and a few local attacks as well. And so this morning marks the end of the psychopath's career.

It is the end as well for the out-of-prison violence of his two current closest colleagues, who are wanted for an aggravated-assault apiece. They prove invaluable to the state in their willingness to testify against the gold-toothed psychopath, whom they know only as James but the law enforcement community knows as the serial killer dubbed "The Hunter," in exchange for shorter prison terms for their own crimes.

As for the two people left standing there, facing each other in the clearing, Bella never learns how close she came to an unspeakable end, while Edward never forgets how close he came to losing her, and losing her so horribly. He's so overcome with lingering fear and overwhelming relief that he can't speak at first, so summons her to him with just an outstretched hand and curling fingers.

Bella, of course, is herself overwhelmed by first the strange encounter with the scary men, and now Edward's sudden appearance that both relieves and frightens her—not that she's frightened of _him_, but of what his presence means for her, and of the deep sense of inadequacy that makes her certain she will end up feeling humiliated by Edward Cullen and not loved—so that she cannot walk, and rather thinks she might need to sit down right where she is standing.

Finally, they both move, Bella dropping down as Edward runs forward and catches her up into his arms as she falls.

Caught in Edward's embrace, Bella doesn't fight his hold, but circles her shaking arms around his neck and buries her face against his chest. And then, safe at last, she starts to cry.

He holds her tightly against him, his own cheek pressed into the dear brown hair on top of the sweet naïve head of the girl that had so nearly been taken from him forever.

"Jesus, Isabella; you scared me," he finally manages to say as she sobs on.

She responds, "I'm—so—sorry!" in between huge sobs, and the spell of fear on Edward is broken as he laughs and pulls her in even more tightly against him.

"Silly girl; you have nothing to apologize for," he gently chastises, then pushes in to kiss her on a wet cheek before pulling her back against him with a large hand splayed across her head, covering, and protecting, as much of her as he can.

Ignoring for the moment Bella's muffled and stuttering, "But-but-but"'s, Edward turns and looks up as he first hears, then sees a uniformed police officer approaching them on the trail from the direction they both had come.

"Everything alright here?" the officer enquires, drawing closer.

Bella startles at the sound of a new voice, and her sobs quiet as she sniffles and brings a hand up to try to wipe the tears and snot away.

Edward intercepts her hand, tucking it between Bella's body and his own, and reaches for the handkerchief he had wisely made sure was stowed in his pocket when dressing that morning for just such a comforting purpose as this (though he hadn't expected such a dramatic context for the comforting). He wipes her face gently, tenderly, looking down a couple times as he does so (though she doesn't see this as she's studying his shirt at close quarters while trying not to start crying again) and kissing her on the nose when he's done, all while he's carrying on a conversation with the officer.

"Yes, all five ran down that trail," Edward confirms, tipping his head to indicate the trail behind them. "I assume they've been apprehended?" he follows up.

The officer is next to them now, eyeballing Isabella in a proprietorial way that makes Edward grit his teeth against the protective-possessive rage flaring inside him.

Finally the officer answers, "Yeah, you made quite a score there. Roughly 15 unexecuted warrants among the 5, though most belong to one of 'em."

Then, satisfied that the girl seemed to be willingly in the arms of the rich asshole (for he shares the psychopath's resentment of Edward's existence on the planet), the officer looks up, meets the cold green eyes staring back at him, and adds, "Lucky save there, if you don't mind my sayin'," with a head nod toward the girl.

A curt head nod back is what he gets for his pleasantry, and the officer is only too glad to finish up as the EMT crew arrives with, "We'll get her statement at the hospital then, and yours too if you're going with her."

And taking Edward's second curt nod as the only assurance he needs, for he's got rich asshole's name and number courtesy of the bodyguard who sent on the photos, he turns his back on Edward and Bella to give orders to one of the EMT's.

The other medic, the one carrying a backboard, approaches Edward immediately and asks to examine his girl. "May I see her, please," the no-nonsense, heavy-set female says as she pulls on exam gloves—and she's not really asking.

Taking his time, Edward leans down and says in Isabella's ear, "Sweetheart, there's someone here who wants to look you over and make sure you're okay. Those men didn't touch you, did they baby?" he double-checks, reasonably certain of the answer but needing the reassurance of her response anyway.

Feeling better than he has all morning, Edward relays the information conveyed in the shy shake of Isabella's head against his chest as he tells the medic, "They didn't touch her."

"That's good," the medic says curtly, while Edward carefully lowers Bella's feet to the ground, helps her stand and oh-so-gently turns her around by the arms to face the EMT.

As Edward pulls Isabella back against his chest, wrapping both arms around her waist and placing each of his hands on one of her hips, the medic asks Isabella, "What's your name, sweetheart?", unintentionally echoing Edward in the term of endearment but employing it much more matter-of-factly as she starts her physical assessment with an observation of pupil size and respiration.

With a little coaching and a lot of encouragement from Edward, Bella manages to say her name and answer the medic's other questions, albeit haltingly and very, very quietly.

Satisfied enough with the results of the initial assessment, the two EMT's prep the backboard to transport Bella (for she's clearly in shock) out of the clearing. Edward stops them, saying, "Don't bother; I'll be carrying her. Shall we?"

The EMT's look at each other and shrug. Then the woman says, "I guess that's alright," releasing her side of the backboard and moving behind to follow Edward out of the clearing, Bella cradled in his arms, the other EMT leading the way.

There's a pause in their procession at the spot with benches where Edward's ally, having finished the pretzel and smoothie, claps her hands in pleasure at the gallant knight returning with the beautiful maiden in his arms, the maiden's innocence seemingly intact. "You found her!" the woman crows, and Edward bestows upon her a very grateful grin.

"Thanks to you," he gallantly tips his head and says, walking over to make introductions.

"Isabella, this is…" and Edward pauses, waiting for the lady to supply her name, something she can't do yet…though it eventually comes back to her after a few weeks in her new, well-nourished life in the apartment Edward pays for, with the medical care he provides for her too. After it becomes clear she isn't going to tell him her name, he finishes with, "the lady who helped me find you."

After taking a moment to pull Isabella closer and kiss her on the cheek at the memory of how close he came to not finding her in time, Edward then makes introductions the other way. "This is Isabella Swan, and I am Edward Cullen, and we are both indebted to you for your help. Can we find you here later? I need to take her to the hospital now."

"Oh yes, I'm always here, unless I'm over towards the zoo, or it's a cold day and I visit the station. I keep my eyes out for runaways, I do. They never seem to realize it's usually much better to face what you know, then run away into what you don't."

Edward smiles at the hard-earned wisdom so freely shared, and nods his head in agreement. "Then I'll be seeing you again. Thank you!" and leaning down says quietly to Isabella, "Go ahead and wave good-bye, Sweetheart," and she does, adding a shy "It was very nice to meet you," to boot, making the park-bench guardian beam.

And so all is much better than it ever has been before for all three of them, Edward, Bella, and Amelia May, though Bella can't quite feel the whole truth of that yet.

XxXxXx

_I've got what happens next in my brain, and will try to write it down, in all its potentially-tedious specificity, sometime soon._

_For as ridiculous as some people may find my fanfic plot lines, for me the writing is like a scientific analysis __of precisely what MUST happen given the combination of a dominant, loyally-loving-affectionate, moral and intelligent (let's not forget powerfully rich to eliminate the stressors and barriers of normal life) Edward; a high-feeling, relational, intelligent, loyally-loving-affectionate (and of course beautiful to eliminate the stressors and barriers of a relationship that defies animal-social standards of romantic pairing) Bella; and whatever particular beginning situation we place those impossibly-perfect-for-each-other characters in._

_I'm not sure my stories even qualify as "writing" in the fiction sense; they're more like "emotional observation" as well as some serious wish fulfillment…though I'm long past the point where I could even pretend that such an outcome is possible for me, nor do I, sometimes, even want it, preferring (gasp!) the hard-fought lovingness of my real life, and the very-much-not-perfect (especially me) real people in it. __But I do miss the part of me that __**used **__to want Bella's happy ending, to desperately long for it even, because of the naïve hope of happiness that longing represented and is, for better or for worse, part of me no more._

_Apparently though I still have some other stubborn muse inside me, because I regularly churn out more of the same story I've always written-just in slightly different clothes. __I offer you one of those recent outpourings below with the hope that it brings you a moment of pleasure in the midst of the trials of your own life. __And if it can't do that, then just take my internet-mediated affection and very best wishes for a happy spring._

_Yours as always, with much affectionate mushiness,_

_liza_

XxXxXx

In a convenience store on a concourse of the Chicago-O'Hare Airport…

Bella's crouching in front of the book display; her eyes caught by a couple classic novels for kids (very girly kids) displayed down there. She's on her way to her third year of college at a school she doesn't really like to please her mother. She's trying to study to be a doctor, to please her father, only she has a sneaking suspicion she's not going to make it past organic chemistry this semester and she doesn't have any idea what her back-up plans should be and she's scared. And stressed. And completely overwhelmed (thus the appeal of the well-loved children's books).

Edward doesn't see Bella; he's in a foul mood from the break-up conversation he just had with his gorgeous French model girlfriend, who'd been in Chicago for work. He dumped her. He doesn't really know why, only that he's bored again. She hadn't been bored, but had grown complacent—his superb manners and natural generosity making her feel she must be his "one," or at least his first in the marriage department. Therefore she did not take kindly to being gently told "this isn't working for me," as Edward had tried to do, and turned the break-up into an ugly shouting match, at least on her part, before finally Edward just turned his back and left, mobile items hitting the walls around him as he did so. Quickly.

Bella senses someone approaching behind her and rises quickly from her position, embarrassed to be found looking at juvenile reading material, turning as she stands. Edward, holding a coffee in front of him that he's disgustedly decided to pitch for already being lukewarm shortly after purchase, is striding towards the magazine/newspaper display above her head, reaching out with his non-coffee holding hand and only noticing the small body now directly in his path as it rises suddenly and pivots—directly into him.

The first impact is Bella's arm with Edward's coffee-cup, sending the tepid liquid sloshing up through the drinking slot and spraying the front of his shirt and his tie, just above his pants.

Bella sees this and is horrified, her breathing ramping up and her muscles tensing in panic, and Edward is shocked at the sudden appearance of this small person in his personal space. He can't interrupt the next step he takes in time, and so he almost runs said small person over, but reaches his newspaper-grabbing hand out instead and clasps the back of her to keep her from falling over.

So there they are, frozen, like dancers in a photo shot, Edward with his weight on one foot dipping rigid Bella back, their eyes meeting for an endless moment…

His body registers hers at a purely animal level—the short, fearful breaths, the tense muscles, the smallness of stature paired with the relative maturity yet innocent beauty of her face and forward features. And his body is pleased.

So it's Bella who moves first, recovering from the intensity of those glittering green eyes boring into her own and throwing herself forward and to the side, removing herself from Edward's unintentional embrace and accidentally jostling, again, his coffee-holding arm.

Edward's fast enough this time that the coffee that escapes merely lands on the carpet or drips on his hand, but he punctuates it with a "Shit," and Bella's face flames.

Stuttering, she's so embarrassed and panicked, she manages a squeaky, "I'm so sorry; I'm so sorry!" as she reaches out with the end of her own shirt wrapped around her fist and starts to rub at the coffee stains on Edward's front.

Edward stares down at the girl, hard at work just above his crotch, incredulously, then starts to feel an unaccustomed humor flood his system—along with other feelings he's less sure of being appropriate. Partly in an attempt to cover those, he starts to laugh, his eyes crinkling up with a friendliness and warmth most strangers and even most acquaintances in his life never see.

Bella doesn't see it either, at least not right away. She feels the stranger's abdomen moving as she hears the laughter, and all of a sudden she realizes that perhaps rubbing furiously against an unknown man's stomach is not the most appropriate thing to be doing.

Awash in more shame and humiliation than even she is used to feeling, she abruptly stops and wraps her arms around her, her head dropping, her eyes welling with tears.

Edward watches this, and stops laughing immediately. Feeling a concern he would not have believed possible for an almost-perfect stranger, he crouches, carefully sets the coffee cup down on the floor behind him, and looks up into her face.

Seeing tears, he says, "Hey, you okay?"

Grimacing at what has come out of his mouth, he tries again, as the girl's shoulders start to move up and down with audible sobs. "Are you hurt?"

Surprised by this man's kindness after she's knocked into him (for in her mind she's taking all the blame for the situation, as usual, it never occurring to her that perhaps the accident was the result of Edward not noticing _her_) and spilled coffee all over what is, she can't help but notice out of the corners of her downcast eyes, a very expensive looking outfit, Bella can only shake her head in response, her lips tightly sealed against the louder cries threatening to come out.

Edward watches the surreptitious examination of his person and the shyly-vehement head shake, and sees the signs of a valiant effort being waged against the expression of emotion—though he's not sure _how_ he can be so sure the girl is trying not to cry, as most of the women he knows or has known in the past have had no hesitation whatsoever in expressing what they feel when they feel it.

Smiling again, with gentleness and no laughter this time, he reaches a hand up towards hers and says, "Are you sure you're all right?"

Another sob breaks out at the kindness of this question, and Bella nods her head up and down emphatically, but Edward just shakes his own and observes, with a quiet sort of almost-censure, "You don't look alright to me."

This challenge of sorts surprises Bella enough into raising her head and looking at him. Who is this man who actually seems to care that she's having a meltdown? Even people she's known for years avoid her when she's like this, and here's a complete stranger, an incredibly good-looking (she realizes as she actually looks at his face for the first time) and well-dressed man acting like he wants to know the truth about how awful she feels at this moment.

Shocked, she stops crying, and Edward smiles, rewarding her with a nod and a "That's better, then."

Feeling a little disappointed at realizing their interaction is probably at an end, Edward reaches for the culprit coffee cup and stands, preparing to say good-bye and chastising himself for the ridiculousness of how lonely that thought makes him feel.

But before he gets the chance to wish her a good day, Bella gets an eyeful of the brown stain on his crisp white shirt and the spatters on his sharp blue tie, and her face drops in renewed horror. "I'm so sorry!" she gasps out, her hand reaching out towards the stains as if she might try to blot them again, then pulling in to her body like she's been bitten.

"What, this?" Edward asks, looking down at his outfit a little ruefully, but nowhere near as upset as her. "Don't worry; it's nothing," he assures her, though of course it isn't nothing but the likely end of the several-hundred-dollar custom-made shirt and equally-expensive designer tie. Although that _is_ nothing to him financially, so it isn't really a lie.

Bella, however, is disbelieving, and, still feeling wholly responsible for the accident, rushes to say, "I'll, I'll pay for the dry cleaning!" her eyes flicking once more to his with an earnest apology in her whole bearing that somehow hurts his heart.

Edward looks at the modest quality of the clothes the girl is wearing, the old backpack slung over her shoulder and the worn shoes on her feet, and he makes a decision. He's going to see her safely to where she's going, or to whomever she's travelling with.

For Edward is horrified at how vulnerable she's making herself to him, though it also warms him somehow inside (unlike the tepid coffee), and he's determined that she will not be left alone to offer to pay other strangers' dry-cleaning bills for accidents they've caused. To him, it's as automatic and obvious as not leaving a toddler wandering a city street alone.

And so he ignores her offer and asks a question instead. "May I walk you to your gate?"

"My gate?" the girl repeats, confused and surprised by the change in topic.

Edward smiles, his heart warming to unprecedentedly high temperatures at the naïve innocence of this person's bearing. _A child,_ he says to himself, though he wouldn't have thought it at first. She must be younger than she looks, a young teenager perhaps, travelling alone for the first time.

_Aren't they supposed to be under the supervision of flight crew if that's the case?_ he thinks, ready to berate some slacker steward or stewardess for their contemptible dereliction of duty.

Aloud he affirms, "Your gate." Then he thinks of something, realizing that before they collided the girl must have been crouching to examine the bottom shelf, and in his usual business-like manner says, "After we get what you were in here for."

Looking down at the bottom shelf contents himself, he realizes she must indeed be much younger than he thought she was at first, and is relieved he did nothing to give away his body's initial reaction to her—as well as more than a little disturbed at how wrong his animal intuition could have been in this encounter. Covering for this, he dials up his bossiness, sure now the little girl in front of him needs it.

"Which book is it?" he asks, matter-of-factly, as he leans in to the display and surveys the juvenile titles.

"Um, no, I, I was just looking," Bella stutters in mortification, her hands wringing a strap on her backpack as she contemplates just running away from the humiliation of this whole situation. But something in her won't let her voluntarily leave the presence of the surprising man in front of her, this obviously-powerful, absolutely-terrifying and oh-so-kind man in front of her.

Edward looks back at her, surprised anew at her reticence, for most young ladies he's been accustomed to always find something to buy when he's the one buying. She catches his incredulous gaze, and makes her usual assumption of inadequacy and error on her own part, realizing with horror that she hadn't thanked him for his help and assuming he's surprised by her own bad manners.

Rushing to erroneously fix things, Bella spills out words rather than coffee. "Oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't say thank you! For your help before, I mean! And—and—for not being mad at me for spilling coffee on you! I'm so sorry about that! I really will pay for the dry-cleaning!"

Stopping abruptly at her realization that she's offered _again_ to do something she can't actually afford or manage, Bella's face flames red and her eyes drop to the ground and once more, she starts to cry.

Seeing he's back at square one with his newfound charge, and both elated and frustrated by the difficulty of accomplishing anything matter-of-fact with her, Edward turns easily with a sigh and—to his own and Bella's utter shock—wraps an arm around the girl's waist before he knows what he's doing.

When he realizes he's inserted himself into her personal space again, with no accident to blame it on (_I've_ _accosted her, really_, he chastises himself), he freezes, looking for a way to play off his action as only a helping gesture before he distances himself from this perplexing creature and stays far away.

But in the split-second before he can act on his plan to distance himself, Bella changes it—changes them—forever by, without her own awareness or conscious thought beforehand, stepping closer into his embrace.

Smiling in spite of himself, Edward looks down at the brown head willingly closer to him now, and—despite his rational mind screaming epithets at himself in case the delinquent chaperone(s) he's assuming must exist should finally make an appearance and find him embracing their minor charge—tightens his hold slightly around the girl's waist.

The girl responds by shuffling a little closer to him again, and finally he says an inner "Fuck it" and, setting the coffee cup down for the last time on the newspaper display, pulls her against his chest while his other arm reaches around her back and gently draws her head against him.

Bella feels as if she might explode or wet her pants or both, and squeaks a little as she wraps her own arms around the stranger's muscular waist, tucking her head against his hard chest. She's shocked at her own forwardness, and a half-second later starts to un-do it, but is stopped by Edward pressing her even closer to him, and leaning down to whisper, "Good girl," in her ear.

That's the end of rational thought for quite some time for Bella. She is now reduced to such a state of shock and animal dependency that she would have, without question, done anything that man asked her to do. Absolutely anything.

Edward senses her utter capitulation, and feels a high no drug or interaction, not even his best business deals, has ever before given him. Instantly hooked, he's now calculating how to wrest control of the girl from whatever inadequate protector is ostensibly in charge.

Thinking he might visit the security office to report her wandering and then offer to chaperone, with whatever bribe might be necessary to effect the transfer of right to her for the time being, Edward leans in towards the head nestled against him and asks, "Who's supposed to be watching you right now, little one?"

Freezing once more, trying to make sense of the nonsensical thing her savior is asking her, Bella stutters her response. "What—what do you mean?"

Releasing her head and waist in order to crouch down again and look up into her transparent face, Edward slides his hands down her arms and catches her little hands in his long fingers. "Who's supposed to be watching you in the airport, sweetheart? Is it a stewardess, or do you have a friend or family member around?"

Somehow, Edward hadn't considered the latter possibility until he spoke it aloud, for the girl seemed so utterly _alone_. Still, he realizes now it's the most likely scenario, that somewhere in one of the waiting spaces all around them is an ungrateful and shockingly reckless human being responsible for letting this small person wander.

Feeling simultaneously bereft and outraged, Edward starts to let go of Bella's hands as her eyes open wide in the terror of her mistaken realization of _why_ this wonderful stranger is being so kind to her.

Edward sees the terror, and instantly tightens his hands again around Bella's now cold and clammy fingers. "What's wrong, little girl?" he asks urgently.

Bella's eyes go even wider, and she shakes her head vehemently while trying to pull her hands away. "I'm-I'm not little!" she says, ashamed and oh-so-angry at herself for believing for even one moment that this man could have meant to be kind to _her_, 20-year-old Bella Swan. _He thinks I'm a kid!_ she moans to herself inside, and she pulls harder at his grasp.

Perplexed at her response, Edward draws his brows together as he says conciliatorily while his hands continue to hold hers tightly, "Okay, so you're a big girl. You still need someone—"

"No! I'm not a girl at all! I'm…I'm a grown-up!" Bella manages, blushing harder than ever at the last phrase that comes out, wishing she'd said "an adult" instead. But at least it makes the point; at least now this man has the information he needs to let go of her, and turn away in disgust, and leave her to pick up her own pieces and go on, pretending that she's normal; pretending that she's fine.

She isn't able to look Edward in the face any more, just biding her time until he walks away from her forever, so she doesn't see the worry drain out of his face and the huge grin that rises as her words sink in. Feeling the need to clarify his good fortune before his happiness gets too far out of control, Edward says calmly, "How old are you exactly, then?"

His words hit like weapons, each one cutting deeper. She clears her throat, trying to find her voice as she wishes herself a million miles away. When she finally speaks, it's so quiet he has to lean in to hear her, but he does. She whispers, "I'm…I'm twenty."

There's a horrible silence for Bella, and a rejoicing one for Edward. _Twenty! __She's twenty! __She's __**mine**__!_

Realizing there may still be a family member to deal with, Edward takes a steadying breath and plunges forward in his hopeful plan. "And who are you travelling with, my twenty-year-old?"

At the word "my," Bella's head snaps up, her eyes as wide as they've ever been. Is he making fun of her? Or is he…could he be…there's no way that he might be…serious?

Edward sees both her incredulity and her hope, and he rewards the hope with the warmest smile he can conjure on his face and in his eyes. Lifting his eyebrows, he prods her for an answer with some suggestions of his own. "Are you with your mom? Your dad? Grandparents? Aunt or uncle?"

After each family member he pauses, dreading her confirmation and getting instead a little shake of her head. His grin grows, but there are still others who might interfere. "Siblings? Friends? A school group?"

After the final shake of Bella's head, Edward feels brave enough to ask the billion-dollar question (million doesn't cover it, as he has millions—hundreds of millions, actually, with his company worth more—but he does not have her): "Are you alone, sweetheart?"

A bit lip, a tear running down her cheek, and a head nod with downcast eyes answers his question in glorious completeness, and he celebrates by quickly standing and pulling her in for another hug, this one much less hesitant. Smiling hugely at the blessed coffee cup he spies still sitting on the shelf holding the papers he now has no interest in, Edward wraps a commanding arm around the girl's waist once more and wends one hand through her thick brown hair and around her slender neck, cupping the back of the precious head that he pulls snugly against himself with a sense of rightness, of possession, of completion.

He feels the quiet sobs start and he does not shush them, but rocks her slightly back and forth while his thumb strokes down against her cheek, catching some moisture as it falls and moving it around as if to say, _I see your pain, and I am not afraid.__I am not afraid.__You can cry all you like, and I will hold you 'til you're done._

Which is exactly what she does, and he does—at least until they're interrupted by a heedless businessman after the same paper Edward had reached for not ten minutes before. "Excuse me," he says, perfunctorily, not even noticing the embrace before him or choosing to ignore it, either one.

Though he takes his time, Edward does move in response to the businessman, realizing he is grateful for the reminder of the outside world, and the need to take steps to make this fleeting airport encounter something tangible and lasting.

Releasing the now quiet _20-year-old! _ in his arms, Edward moves her slightly out of the way of the magazine stand and bends his knees slightly as one hand goes up to catch the side of her lovely face, the other hand settling against her waist to hold her there. "What's your name, beautiful girl?" he asks, and grins as the answering blush spreads across her face and her eyes avoid his.

When she avoids answering him right away, Edward teases her, asking, "Am I going to have to guess this too?"

She smiles at the kindness in the question, the gentleness of his teasing of her, and she shakes her head "No." Then she risks lifting her eyes to his, for just a moment, a wonderful, magical moment, and as her eyes fall to safety once more she finds her voice for long enough to say, "Bella. My name is Bella."

"Bella," Edward repeats, savoring the word on his tongue. "Bella. That is perfect," he says, speaking to himself.

Then, addressing her again, he asks, "And where are you meant to be headed today, sweet Bella?"

Bella misses the promise in his question, the potentially ominous assertion in his words if she were one to value her autonomy, and doesn't understand yet that her life is no longer what it was before she spilled coffee on this miraculous man in front of her. "I'm going back to school," she says, more easily than she can believe given how much she doesn't want to be doing just that.

"And where do you go to school?" Edward asks, wondering if she will continue there or not; wondering if he will let her.

"Smith College, in Massachusetts," Bella answers, not wondering once if it is wise for her to tell a stranger this fact.

Edward shakes his head at her trustingness, and smiles at her clarification of Smith's location. Teasing her a little more, he tells her, "I know where Smith College is, little one."

"You do?" Bella asks, surprised by everything about this marvelous person before her.

"I have a sister who went there, a little while ago. She's about your size, and your coloring too, except for your beautiful brown eyes, but otherwise your complete opposite."

Bella, blushing fiercely at this handsome man's characterization of any part of her as "beautiful," doesn't know what to say to this, so only manages "Oh." But then she tries to be polite, and show him some of the kind consideration he has shown her, so she adds, "Did she like it?"

Edward purses his lips in mock consideration of her question, buying time as he pulls out his phone with the hand not on the girl's waist and brings up his first-class boarding pass and the latest information about the flight's times.

Checking the old-fashioned Rolex on his wrist (it had been his grandfather's), Edward realizes he needs to get moving to avoid the inconvenience of missing his flight and having to wait for another. He wishes now he had chartered a plane for this journey, but at the time it had seemed easier just to fly commercial.

Looking back to the girl still waiting patiently for an answer to her polite inquiry, Edward says, "Not very much, truth be told. What about you? Are you very happy there?"

Holding his breath as he waits for an answer, Edward realizes he has it already in the time it takes _Bella_ to respond; in the renewed blush on her cheeks, and the twist of an anxious foot; in the apologetic tone of her voice when she whispers, with a tiny shake of her head, "I don't like it very much either."

The hope in her face raised to his own after she ventures this bit of honesty, this test of him to see if he will condemn her or support her in not feeling at home in a place supposed to be an honor and a privilege to attend, it is the last little nourishment his psyche needs to be certain of her place in his heart and in his home, and to take charge of both her and the situation _now_.

With a brisk nod, he rewards her small soul-baring with an emphatic, "I am _very_ glad to hear that, little one." He lets that sit for a moment or two, watches as Bella—_his_ Bella—flushes with pleasure at his approbation, and then continues as he puts his phone away and grabs her hand closest to him, "And now we need to move, sweet Bella, before the plane takes off without us."

Having pulled her tripping in to his side, Edward turns briefly and grabs the two most likely-looking books off the bottom rack, then watches Bella's surprised and pleased and highly embarrassed reaction as he marches her to the check-out desk to pay for them. Adding two waters and a pack of gum with a busy left hand, his right never letting go of Bella until he switches her to his left-hand side to retrieve his phone and pay, Edward stashes the bag with his purchases in his shoulder-slung carry-on and then grabs her backpack as well, ignoring her weak protest as he adds her bag onto his shoulder.

"I can carry that. I don't want to bother—"

He cuts her off, matter-of-fact. "It's no bother, Bella. Now let's go."

And he's both horrified and elated at how happily she trips out of the store after him, following him wherever he chooses to lead her, shaking his head at her unquestioning willingness to trust him at the same time that he's grinning at his unbelievably good fortune in finding her so.

He doesn't speak as he guides her through the throngs to the gate for his flight to Boston—and, as it happens, her flight as well. "Oh! Are you going to Boston too?" Bella asks, surprised to see where they've ended up and wondering at her own good fortune in going the same direction as this unbelievably wonderful person holding her hand.

Edward doesn't bother replying right away, focused instead on queueing up at the gate's busy counter in order to effect the change of seats he has in mind. Once in line, he pulls Bella to stand in front of him and lets go of her hand in order to deal with her backpack, which he starts unzipping to check for her boarding pass and ID.

Bella watches him rifle through her bag, her face showing her confusion, and finally asks, no anger in her tone at all but great curiosity, "What are you looking for?"

He grins at her, moving them both forward as the line progresses, leaving only one elderly woman with a question about her carry-on ahead of them. "Your boarding pass," he answers as he triumphantly pulls the document out, "and your ID," he adds as he fishes her wallet out as well.

Seeing Bella's blush start up again, Edward extends the wallet towards her and offers, "Would you like to get your ID out for me?"

He is simultaneously incredulous and ecstatic at how she wordlessly takes the wallet from him and obediently removes her ID, then hands both the card and the wallet back over to him as if he has every right in the world to take control of her this way.

He doesn't have time to say anything more than, "Thank you, sweetheart," (he's noticed the strong effect such terms of affection have on her, and is doing what he can to keep her securely in his thrall), before the gate attendant is briskly asking him, her eyes on her computer screen, "How can I help you?"

"Well, Linda," Edward begins with a quick perusal of the attendant's personnel badge, "my girlfriend here needs a change of seats for the flight. I'll pay whatever necessary for her to be given the seat next to me that I've reserved already."

Edward always reserves two seats when flying commercial to spare himself the intrusion of an unwanted neighbor. If he were in coach, the airline might override him when the flight was full, but as he's a high-status first-class customer paying full price for both seats, the airline leaves him be.

The attendant notices this as she pulls up his account, and warms her tone considerably in response to his VIP status. "That shouldn't be a problem, Mr. Cullen," she purrs, reaching for Bella's ticket and ID and entering that information as well.

Except it is a problem, for Bella's ticket was purchased in an on-line deal, part of which precluded paying for any upgrades. So she needs a brand-new ticket in first-class, but all the seats are ticketed already, and Mr. Cullen's own two seats are both non-refundable, having just been purchased that morning. So the attendant cannot, according to the airline's strict rules, change one of the seats from his name to Bella's, and of course she can't issue a boarding pass to the girl for a seat not in her name.

Realizing she's about to make a rich person angry, the attendant puts up her "not-my-problem, rules-are-rules" armor and starts in on her perfunctorily-apologizing-but-not-really speech.

Edward's eyebrows are starting to rise, and he's bracing himself for the process of going up the authority chain until he gets the outcome he wants, when he hears his name called from behind him.

Looking back over his shoulder, Edward sees an old family friend and business partner approaching, a wide smile on his face. "Edward, how are you?" Aro Volturi asks.

Edward returns the warm smile, reaching out to shake hands, but also steps closer to the girl in front of him. There's something about Aro that has never been quite trustworthy, especially where women are concerned. "I'm well, Aro, and yourself?" Edward responds.

"Never better, my young friend, never better." Sizing up the situation quickly and with a preternatural ability to read people, as he always does, Aro notes the tension between Edward and the girl in front of him and winks suggestively. "Trying to bring home a lady friend, Edward?"

Edward's back stiffens at the suggestiveness, but he sees a potential ally in resolving his current problem and makes the best of it. "As a matter of fact, I am, Aro, but the airline is balking at switching her ticket to one of my first-class seats. Any chance you can help?"

This is not a stab in the dark; Aro is a board member of the airline and Edward knows it, being a significant stockholder himself.

"Absolutely, my dear boy, absolutely. But perhaps first you'll introduce me?" and Aro transfers his leering gaze to the cowering Bella, not that she can see that as she's studying the carpet very intently at the moment.

Edward resents Aro's presumption, but complies out of politeness and the stronger desire to have his new-found girl home with him as soon as possible. "Of course, Aro."

Then turning back to Bella and putting a protective/possessive hand on her shoulder, he says, "Bella, this is Aro Volturi, an old friend. Aro, this is Isabella Swan" (Edward has already memorized the front of Bella's Washington-state driver's license).

Aro approaches closer, reaching out his hand past Edward's protective stance and waiting for Bella to shyly put her hand in his, her eyes reaching to the newcomer's chin as she manages to say quietly, "It's very nice to meet you."

Edward's heart fills with pride and affection at his girl's bravery and manners, and he can't help but lean in and kiss her lightly on top of her head, whispering a "Good girl" as he pulls back.

Aro's soaking it all up, relishing the evidence of the cool Edward Cullen having finally developed a vulnerability worth exploiting, and enjoying reading the extent of that vulnerability in the unbelievably open innocence of the girl in question. A girl, Aro realizes, he would particularly enjoy having for himself after stealing her away from Edward by any means necessary.

Aro is rich and powerful enough he can't help but ask for what he wants outright as he shakes the girl's hand for longer than is really appropriate. "The pleasure is all mine, sweet Isabella. I don't suppose I could talk you into letting her keep an old man company, Edward?"

Edward moves to physically block Bella from Aro's view, making Aro inwardly chuckle while he starts plotting how to get a hold on this person that the notoriously-independent Edward Cullen feels so protective of. "No, Aro, I'm afraid no one could do that. But do you suppose you could talk the staff into issuing a first-class boarding pass for Isabella?"

Having finally dropped Bella's hand with a wink in response to Edward nearly pulling it out of his grasp, Aro turns back to Edward and magnanimously consents to intervene with the confidence born of a life of extreme wealth and privilege, unbalanced by the ethics and moral sense Edward is constrained by.

Moving to the desk, Aro speaks to the nervous gate attendant. "My friend here needs a boarding pass for his lady friend. You may assign any charges to my account," and Aro produces his own airline identity card and security pass, made at his behest as a board member for just this sort of purpose, and not because he ever plans on doing any actual work for the airline within the confines of the airport.

The gate attendant sees that following rules is now a hopeless endeavor, and pushes the buttons she needs to push in order to spit out a boarding pass with the girl's name on it and one of the first-class seats previously assigned to Edward Cullen. She can't help but resent the little b #$%, feeling the unfairness of a world that would assign such a nondescript, mousy little thing to first class and her own self to the servants attending them.

The resentment makes her smile tight as she hands over the boarding pass with completely false wishes for a good flight, but Bella is beyond noticing anything other than the warm, strong hand holding her own, and Edward no longer cares about anything other than holding on to the girl next to him.

Taking the offered boarding pass, Edward turns back to thank Aro, who responds, "Not at all, my dear boy, not at all. But I will look forward to having you and the lovely Isabella over sometime soon," and Edward is of course forced to agree.

Their back-and-forth is cut short by the boarding announcement for first class, and Aro returns to his valet in order to issue marching orders while Edward moves quickly towards the boarding line with Bella.

Bella isn't really processing what Edward is doing, but she hears a repeat of the first-class boarding announcement as Edward tows her towards the gate attendant checking boarding passes, and so she resists his pull on her for the first time.

Feeling her balk, Edward turns towards her and asks, "Is something wrong, Isabella?" He's instinctively started using her full name as another means of keeping her off-balance and under his control.

It works. Bella blinks up at him, confused, and unable to do more than shake her head "No," so he smiles indulgently and resumes pulling her the few remaining feet to the attendant.

Then Bella's head clears and her eyes widen and she balks again, more strongly this time, making Edward stop once more. "Sweetheart, what's wrong?" he asks, not exasperated exactly but with a tone of voice that sends the message that he wants whatever is bothering her out in the open so that it can be dealt with, _now_.

Bella swallows nervously, then stutters. "Um, Mr., um, Edward?" she asks hesitantly, having only remembered his first name.

Edward grins, and says, "Just Edward, honey. What is it?"

Bella blushes violently at the "honey," and blurts out, "I'm not in first-class; I can't board now."

Edward tilts his head questioningly at her, looking for a sign that she's teasing him or playing at something, and sees nothing other than a growing blush with tears starting once more, and her teeth worrying her bottom lip.

He deals with the last item first. "Stop that," he chides gently, as his thumb tenderly presses against her bottom lip, removing it from under her teeth, the rest of his fingers curled up under her jaw as he does so.

This masterful management of her body has a lightning-strike impact on both of them, making Bella inhale loudly and shoot wide eyes up towards his face as Edward groans inwardly, flaring his nostrils and flexing his other hand as he tries to re-direct the shockingly strong urge to press Bella against his own body.

Aro breaks the moment as he bustles by, long-suffering valet in tow, greeting them as he goes. "Aha, I'm beating you onto the plane, children! See you on board!" he crows as he moves by them.

Edward turns to smile and nod at Aro, relieved if also somewhat annoyed by the interruption, and then turns back to an even-redder Bella studying the industrial carpeting like her life now depends on it.

He takes a moment to consider whether to explain to her that he has had her re-ticketed to sit next to him, decides against it, and resorts back to brute force. "Trust me, Sweetheart," he says in his most authoritative voice, and gripping Bella firmly around the elbow, he finishes dragging her the remaining little bit to the attendant watching the pair with no small amount of curiosity and, as far as Bella is concerned, even more jealousy.

Handing over both their ID's, Bella's paper boarding pass and his phone with his own boarding pass pulled up, Edward waits aggressively, his challenging eyes on the attendant as she goes about her business, then nods as she hands everything back with her almost-sincere wishes for a good flight.

Quickly, Edward pockets it all, Bella's ID included, then resumes pulling her down the ramp to board the plane.

Bella is struggling less now, having expected to be lectured by the gate agent and shocked to still be proceeding onto the plane. She trips along wordlessly behind Edward, and doesn't hesitate again until they're on the plane, and he tries to wave her into the window seat of their row.

Bella looks at the seat he's indicating, the large, overstuffed leather seat in only the second row of the plane, and finally puts her foot down. "I can't sit here, Edward," she says, enunciating clearly like she's speaking to a 3-year-old. "My ticket is in coach."

Edward ignores her for the moment, setting down his carry-on to pull the bag from the convenience store out before stashing both his bag and her backpack in the overhead compartment, careful to keep her only access down the aisle blocked with his body the whole time.

Bags stashed, he turns back to Bella, picks her up by both bent elbows and lifts her, still standing, into the space in front of her seat before sitting down in his own. "You're sitting here now," he says simply as he adjusts the seat slightly to his comfort, and pulls the two water bottles out of the bag, sticking one in each of their seat pockets.

Bella remains standing there, her mouth open, and then tries again. "But your girlfriend is going to sit here! I heard you tell the lady that at the gate!"

Edward looks up at her, a wicked grin on his face. "_You_ are the girlfriend, sweetheart. Now sit down so I can buckle you in. I don't want all the poor bastards in coach sizing you up as they walk by." And as he says this, he stands, towering over her all the way up to the overhead compartment which makes him hunch his back and lower his head, his heavy-lidded knowing eyes weighing her down with his gaze like an iron chain.

She doesn't actually sit, however, until his hands go on her shoulders, applying the additional force necessary for her knees to buckle and for her to fall into the seat with an inelegant but greatly-satisfying-to-Edward plop.

Immediately, his hands move to the seat belt at either side of her hips. He deftly fastens the belt around her, tightening it so it is very secure; indeed, it is so tight it is _almost_ uncomfortable, and has the instant effect of making Bella urgently aware of her need for a bathroom.

Trying to wriggle into a more comfortable position as Edward resumes his seat, Bella bites her lip then breathes out, "Um, Ed-Edward? I… I-need-to-go-to-the-bathroom."

Edward smiles indulgently at her. "I forgot to take care of that before we boarded, didn't I? Well, the first-class bathroom isn't too bad, usually. Let's go find out." And leaning over, he undoes the buckle he has just fastened, then pulls it slowly back over her lap, his thumb dragging across her abdomen the whole way—making Bella's wriggling ramp up so that everything below her waist is squirming.

Edward grins at the effect he is having, and takes a deep breath himself in place of his own squirming before grabbing one of Bella's hands and pulling her up, saying, "Up we go" as he does. He pauses, waiting for a gap in the coach-class traffic flow, then leads Bella to the front bathroom reserved for first-class passengers.

It is larger than the airplane bathrooms Bella is used to, which is good, because after pushing her inside while he holds the door open for her, Edward follows her in, locking the door behind them both.

Bella blushes so hot she feels her hair fan away from her face, and tears start rolling down her cheeks unchecked and uncontrolled. She tries to protest, manages an "Um," but is ignored by Edward who is prepping the seat for her, lifting the lid and wiping the seat clean of any germs, real or imagined.

When he straightens up, he moves around a stock-still Bella to stand just inside the door, his back turned to her with another indulgent smile spread wide across his face, saying, "Alright then, sweetheart, I'll wait like this until you're done. Go ahead."

Bella doesn't move at first, for she is horrified at the idea of using the bathroom with—_this man_—present to hear everything. She may not have ever moved, except Edward, enjoying himself immensely, says matter-of-factly with his face still turned towards the door, "Do you need help then, Isabella?"

He chuckles silently at how quickly she squeaks, "No, thank you," and then at the embarrassed hesitation with which he hears her zipper slide down and her jeans move down her legs.

She pauses before she sits, and he actually starts to turn this time as he says, "Well, clearly you do," stopping himself somewhat reluctantly but cheerfully still as he hears the thud of her landing on the seat.

There's another loaded silence, until Edward gallantly turns on the sink tap, saying, "This will help you get started then, Sweetheart," and finally Bella gives up and lets go, and Edward turns the tap off and listens to the evidence that she has capitulated to him again and will truly be his to manage and maneuver for as long as he desires.

And because he has a deeply loyal and abidingly affectionate heart, that will be for the rest of his life, a fact he is aware of already and will prove true to himself and to her in the many happy years to come.

But for the time being, Bella is far too embarrassed to be happy. She quickly finishes her business and stands, pulling up and re-fastening her jeans as she goes, and flinching as she flushes the toilet.

Turning back to standing she sees Edward behind her in the mirror, smiling at her with warm humor, knowing kindness, and—something else—in his eyes, and her belly fills anew making her feel for one intense moment like she has to pee all over again.

She starts to pant, and Edward, sensing her current discomfort and, unlike Bella herself, understanding the reason for it, reaches around her and places one of his hands spread wide against her round little belly. He lets her wiggle against the hand and against his hold for a few blissful moments before drawing her firmly in to the front of him for a painfully-intense few moments longer.

They stand there, one of Edward's hands against the sink edge and the other pressing Bella into him, for what feels like an eternity, and Edward struggles mightily with the strength of his desire to move against her, subduing it with his customary strength of will, albeit stretched much much thinner than usual.

Bella is frozen, like a cornered rabbit staring at a fox, hoping that she will blend into the scenery around her at the same time, it must be said, that some part of this particular rabbit is yearning to be consumed. Her eyes close, and she feels how the tiny little shallow breaths she's taking make her tummy slightly fall away from then gently press against again Edward's splayed fingers, and it is likely that if Edward hadn't found his self-control in time, Bella would have completely lost hers and pressed that same tummy, feeling so full of she-does-not-know-what, fully into the offered hand.

A moment before, however, Edward releases her and steps forward, pushing her into the sink with the odd, bumpy, _hard_ part of his body behind her, and she feels some relief, and the return of some normalcy as he turns the taps on and presses the dispenser for some soap on her behalf.

The normalcy dissipates and is replaced with a new intensity of feeling, this time building in her heart not her belly, as Edward reaches for her hands and pulls them with one of his under the running water, then soaps them up together, both his hands moving around and between the fingers and palms of both of hers.

As he works, he says, "That's my girl, sweetheart," and for one moment, one breathless moment, she risks looking up into the mirror and sees him still smiling down at her—making her break into at least a thousand pieces.

Starting to cry, her head lowers and she sees her hands no more; only feels as he carefully finishes rinsing them, gently brushing a stray soap bubble off here and there, and turning her hands to one side and the other as he rinses them clean.

As her sobs build, growing noisier as tears roll freely down her face, Edward reaches for a towel and tenderly dries her hands.

Next he dries his own, then turns her at the shoulders and pulls Bella in for a rocking hug.

"Shhhhh, baby girl, you're okay," he says encouragingly as he runs a hand down her hair and her back, his other hand gripping her opposite hip firmly, his arm heavy around her waist.

She takes a couple deep, shuddering breaths, and he praises her, "Good girl, that's right."

Finally, she quiets, resting her head against his chest as if she's too tired to keep it upright anymore.

Edward takes a moment to open and soak one of the disposable wash cloths available in the first-class bathroom, wishing he were home already with real linens and other luxuries to use in tending to Isabella, in water as warm as he can get out of the frustratingly inadequate tap, and wrings it out well before lovingly wiping Bella's face clean of tears.

Lowering his head to speak into her ear when he's finished, Edward asks softly, "Are you too tired to walk, sweetheart? I can carry you."

Bella shakes her head quickly and vigorously at this, then stands up straight, reluctantly lifting that same head away from Edward's mesmerizing chest.

Edward laughs lightly. "Such an independent girl you are. I like that, even though I'm going to change it."

A shudder moves through Bella at his words, but she chooses not to think about them, pretending she's just herself still.

Edward smiles at her stubbornness, and opens the door with his hand moving behind him, then backs out of the bathroom and turns Bella around to the aisle, one hand on her hip and the other holding firmly to her opposite elbow.

They wait again, not as long now as most passengers have already boarded, for a break in the traffic, then quickly navigate the short distance to their seats. Bella doesn't balk at all this time as Edward maneuvers her into their row and then down into her seat, and feels the lingering warmth in her belly spread through her whole body as Edward re-fastens the seatbelt, standing in front of her and leaning over her, taking even longer than before and drawing the seatbelt even tighter.

Isabella can't help but wriggle once in response to the super-snug belt across her lap, and Edward feels his predatory instincts fire. Freezing himself lest he move too far too fast, Edward inhales once, twice, before slowly moving his right hand down to rest against Bella's left knee, then slowly—oh so slowly—sliding his hand up to the top of her thigh, his thumb dragging alongside up between her jeans-covered legs.

Bella freezes at this, the most intimate manner in which she's ever been touched, and squeaks when Edward's thumb comes to rest, for a breathless few seconds, right _there_.

Then, after pressing in ever so slightly, the thumb and the hand attached to it are off her body, and Edward leans down to press a chaste but lingering kiss against her lips before sitting back down beside her and fastening his own seatbelt.

There are no words for some time after, as both Edward and Bella bring their breathing back to normal and accept that there is nothing more that could possibly happen for now as they are on a plane about to back away from the runway and be airborne for over three hours, during which time they are confined both to their seats and to the public exposure of prying eyes. Bella is relieved and a little frustrated by this; Edward is frustrated and a little relieved.

As the flight crew preps for take-off, Edward wordlessly unwraps and holds out a piece of gum in front of Bella's mouth, his steady eyes heavy on her as she glances up. He nods towards the gum, she blushes, and, closing her eyes, opens her mouth and accepts the gum from his fingers as he feeds the piece between her lips. When it's all in, he rests his thumb on her closed lips a moment.

Bella is speechless for a time, chewing her gum and crying quiet, happy tears, but as the plane gains speed down the runway she manages to whisper, "Thank you."

Edward, who hasn't stopped watching her since feeding her the gum (and well before that), smiles more widely at his sweetheart's shy words. Moving quickly into Bella's personal space, he rubs his nose against hers, kisses her sweetly on the cheek, then sits back saying, "You're welcome, love."

Bella curls up in quiet contentment after that, watching the earth grow smaller beneath her and then the clouds go by as Edward occupies himself with happy mental planning of the changes he will make in his home and life to accommodate the girl sitting next to him.

When the first-class stewardess comes by to take meal and drink orders, Edward orders for them both, consulting Bella only on her choice of vegetable (peas and carrots) and whether she'd like ginger ale or fruit juice (she shyly asks for "Ginger ale, please"). Thus Edward's natural aggressive-assertiveness and affectionately-possessive caretaking of her combine to make Bella reach new heights of happiness, and to experience for the first time in her lonely, scared little life the absolute ecstasy of feeling understood, wanted and safe.

After ordering, Edward glances over, sees Isabella's bright eyes without tears, the smile on her face, the rosy red on her cheeks not from blushing but from happiness, and smiles himself, a feeling of great gratitude to the universe filling him much more completely than food, or any other mere physical pleasure, ever could.

He pulls out his phone and works on business, Bella-business, until their meals arrive, and then he's occupied first with cutting up her meat and buttering her bread, and then with wiping her mouth and hands. Finally, leaning in, Edward places a hand wide on Bella's full stomach while he kisses the top of her sweet head.

He tells her again, "You're such a good girl." This time, however, he adds in a more serious, quiet voice, "You're _my_ good girl," and Bella hears it.

Turning her head she stares at him, not sure whether to be incredulous or afraid, and he sees her indecision. Nodding once, he says, "Yes, that's what I said, and I meant it. I'm taking you home with me, you know."

Bella continues to stare, her mind racing, trying to find a place to land, something clear to think, a course of action that makes sense.

Meanwhile, Edward matter-of-factly raises the arm rest between them, reaches over and unbuckles Bella, then pulls her sideways into his lap, adjusting her body to suit him as he goes.

When the side of her head hits his now familiar chest, and her hips are tucked just so between larger and wider hips, and her legs are lifted by a masterful arm and bent at the knee so they wrap up against a strong body seemingly made to shelter her own, Bella melts into the most peaceful, grateful, _happy _sleep she has ever known.

She doesn't awake until Edward is forced by the descent into Logan Airport to gently pull her off his body and back into her own seat, leaving the seat arm up between them and wrapping his own arm around her shoulders after he re-fastens the seatbelt as tightly as ever. Pulling Bella's head down against his shoulder, Edward traces circles against her hip and the tipped-over part of her jeans-clad bottom.

The first loop to go over the unmistakable round of her ass makes Bella freeze, but as Edward continues to trace his finger-tips against her, never pausing but moving matter-of-factly and oh-so-gently, she slowly relaxes, letting her head fall more fully against him and even leaning her body a little farther forward so he has better access to whatever he wants.

He grins wildly at her capitulating movements; he is enraptured; he is ecstatic. But he's smart enough not to go on too long before removing his hand and resting it on her hip instead, the side of one little finger seemingly-innocently falling against her backside, and leaning down to kiss her on the top of her head as he tells her, once more, "You're my good girl, Sweetheart."

And so Bella is insensible to the landing process, and only regains conscious awareness when Edward is moving and unbuckling her, then helping her to stand. "Wait here while I get our bags down," he says, most unnecessarily because she is mindless in her contented happiness and knows all too well already that she has nowhere else to go that would feel as good as this miraculous man in front of her makes her feel.

*Lucky for our Bella, her feelings and her deep desires for once do not mislead or undercut her, and the happiness she feels is lasting, only growing stronger and more true not just for her, but for Edward, and for everyone (which ends up being a very long list, with all the love they have to share) they care for too.

_The End, For Now_

***Cautionary note: **_In my younger, more desperate years, I once almost left the airport with a stranger I met en route back to school. __He was no Edward, and I narrowly missed very likely being used and cast aside, or worse._

_I was lucky, in that he didn't push me as hard as he could have (perhaps he sensed I would be more trouble than I'd be worth to him), __**and **__I listened to my instincts that noticed moments when he could have been kind, or protectively generous, and wasn't._

_Please, please, PLEASE, use these stories to minister to an aching heart and lonely spirit, but __**not **__to chart your future or guide your real-world choices!_

_Sadly, there is no real-world course of action more likely to lead to your long-term well-being than steadfastly pursuing your own material independence (as hard and painful as that may be) AND carefully guarding your vulnerability with a pseudo-tough exterior borne of an awareness of the bad places most people attracted to your vulnerability will take you if you let them (and I of all people understand how hard it is not to let them, which is why you have to be so careful about the situations you put yourself in and the people you associate with in the first place), and an at-least-beginning respect for your own beauty and value to others (which is how I've figured out how to say "No" sometimes)._

_Message me if you need clarification on this point, though be forewarned that: 1)I may accidentally make things worse—internet communication is rife with pitfalls and misunderstandings and 2)I may take an obscenely long time to respond due to my own insecurities and overwhelmment._

_Above all, __**be gentle with and TAKE VERY GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF!**_

_xo l_


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